KARACHI: The government of Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Monday announced it would enforce restricted hours for shopping across the province amid a fresh spike in coronavirus case, warning that a failure to comply with new rules would force the government to impose a complete business lockdown.
Pakistan has recorded 4,825 new infections in the last 24 hours, with 70 deaths.
“Shopping centers are allowed to operate from early morning to 6pm while strictly following SOPs (standard operating procedures),” Syed Murad Ali Shah, Sindh chief minister, said while addressing a press conference in Karachi. “The timings would be implemented in a couple of days.”
He said the infection rate was alarming “as two weeks back it was impacting around 300 persons per day [in Sindh], which has gone up to around 950.”
Shah warned that strict action would be taken against violations of SOPs at shopping centers including sealing them and shutting down business activity altogether.
Sindh traders said a complete lockdown would have “disastrous impacts” on the economy at a time when the trader community was still reeling from the adverse effects of past lockdowns.
“Due to summers the business is already operating at 25-30 percent of its full capacity,” Atiq Mir, chairman of the Karachi Tajir Itehad, an umbrella body of trade associations, told Arab News. “Karachi’s traders undertake business activities of around Rs4 billion daily and restricting the business hours to 6 p.m. will further impact the trading,” he added, saying: “Around Rs50 billion worth of goods for Eid shopping have been stocked by the traders alone in the Karachi.”
Kashif Chaudhry, the president of the Markazi Tanzeem-e-Tajran Pakistan, a national traders body, called for a 24 -hour business day, saying limited hours would create a rush in markets.
“At this point of time, the opening of businesses for 24 hours with SOPs is the only solution to the problem,” Chaudhry said, adding: “The closure of business activities would lead to unemployment, lawlessness, and violence”.
During a previous lockdown imposed in March last year, 27.31 million workers in the country were affected, 20.6 million lost their jobs, and the income of 6.7 million people decreased, according to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics.
Apart from timing restrictions, markets in Karachi have also been ordered to remain closed on Fridays and Sundays, while in other parts of the province as well as the country, markets will remain closed on Saturdays and Sundays.
During Monday’s press conference, the chief minister also announced that schools, colleges and universities would be closed and inter-city transport in Sindh banned from April 29, 2021.
The provincial government also decided to ban outdoor and indoor dining at restaurants, allowing only home delivery and takeaway services. The government has also decided to keep a minimum staff of 20% at government offices while the private sector is allowed to retain 50 percent of its workforce.