Abad urges govt to take action against steel, cement cartels

Muhammad Hassan Bakshi, the chairman of the Association of Builders and Developers of Pakistan (Abad), has urged the government to take stern action against the alleged cartels of cement and steel manufacturers, which, according to him, had severely affected the construction industry.

The construction industry, he pointed out, was providing jobs to more than 2.5 million skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workforce of the country.

In a statement, the Abad chairman said steel bars were being sold at Rs95,000 per ton and a 50-kilogramme bag cement at Rs550 just two months ago but now the costs of a ton of steel and the cement bag had risen to Rs120,000 and Rs700 respectively.

Bakshi said in this situation, Prime Minister Imran Khan’s dream of building five million affordable houses would never come true as the cost of construction had reached its all-time high in Pakistan.

He said Abad had time and again requested the government to take stern action against the cement and steel cartels as they had been inflicting huge losses on the national economy by destroying the construction sector. He claimed that the construction sector was the second largest job provider in the country after agriculture.

The Abad chairman called for the government to take stringent action through the Competition Commission of Pakistan to stop the cartels of cement and steel as they were inflicting misery on the common people.