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Thursday March 28, 2024

MQM-P reiterates traders’ demand to let them open businesses 24/7

By Our Correspondent
May 17, 2020

Blasting the Sindh government for “doing nothing” for Karachi’s traders during the ongoing lockdown, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) on Saturday announces its rejection of the recently signed Sindh COVID-19 Emergency Relief Ordinance 2020 and demanded of the government to allow traders to run their business 24/7 throughout the week.

MQM-P convener and former federal minister Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui said his party fully endorsed the demands of Karachi’s traders, and if the traders’ bodies were ready to protest, the party was ready to support them.

He was addressing a joint meeting of leaders of various trades' bodies held in a park near the MQM-P’s secretariat in Bahadurabad. He said party leaders were in contact with various traders and market associations across the city and were listening to their genuine grievances.

Karachi’s small traders were being discriminated against as only the metropolis remained under the lockdown, Siddiqui said, adding that the Pakistan Peoples Party’s "racist" provincial government would never take care of the interest of Karachi’s traders. “But the MQM-P will leave the traders’ fraternity alone in the crisis."

The MQM-P had sent its leader to meet the Sindh chief minister to discuss the traders' problems, “but we knew that it would not work", he said.

The traders of Karachi, a city that had been earning 70 per cent of the country’s revenue, had been deprived of their genuine rights, he said.

“As being a doctor and a responsible person, I know the threat of the coroanvirus spread. But the government’s ill-planned policies have been spreading it,” he added.

Karachi’s traders had paid 79 per cent sales tax while traders in Lahore had only paid five per cent, he said. “The Punjab government has allowed the transport to operate today. Could the coroanvirus not enter there?” he asked.

“Commissioners and deputy commissioners have been posted in Karachi to earn money. They consider it Dubai,” said Siddiqui.

“The people who are dealing with the city’s affairs do not belong to the city,” he remarked. He said that the Karachi mayor would decide the affairs of the city because people voted him to resolve their issues.

He said that he would ask the mayor to bring the city’s case to the notice of Prime Minister Imran Khan and engage him for the resolution of its issues.

“It was Karachi’s traders who donated the highest amount of money for establishing Shaukat Khanam Hospital and National University of Modern Languages,” he said.

Prime Minister Imran Khan should give loans to Karachi’s traders because they ran Pakistan by paying high amounts of taxes, he said.