KARACHI, June 23: Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim has given permission to the traders to keep their shops open till 9:00pm. The extension in business timings was given at a meeting with traders on Thursday.

This was stated by President Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), Haroon Faruki, who attended the meeting. He said that the government had actually taken the decision of early closure of shops on the plea made by the KESC in order to save the power and to address the load-shedding problems.

However, in the meeting the chief minister was categorically informed by the delegation that there had been no let-up in load-shedding during the day and night despite closure of shops at 8:00pm.

He said that the traders had informed the chief minister that the closure of shops had nothing to do with load-shedding as the KESC had its own internal problems.

The meeting also allowed the shopkeepers, who want to run their outlets on self power generation units after 9:00pm, besides, it was also decided that marriage halls would be bound to start illuminations from 9:00 pm. Operators of signboards, hoardings and billboards will also be asked to light up their fixtures after 9:00pm.

Alliance of Market Association (AMA) chairman Atiq Mir also repeated the same story as stated by the KCCI president. “I have verbally asked my members and issued notices to member associations about the extension in shop closure timing. It has been implemented immediately,” he added.

To a query that the chief minister had only hinted to consider the extension in timing and no notification was issued on Friday, Atiq contended that he (CM) might not be issuing any notification as the market watchers would think that the government has deviating from its earlier stance and this would be termed as the violation of the Shop Act.

He said that the delegation had assured the chief minister that the shopkeepers would voluntarily reduce the power usage in their shops by 50 per cent during 8:00 to 9:00pm. He also claimed that Dr Arbab had allowed the extension in timing after telephonic conversations with the Sindh governor and KESC’s higher ups on this issue during the meeting.

AMA chief further claimed that the 40 per cent markets in the city had lost Rs2 to 3 billion in terms of turnover from June 9 to June 24 owing to 50 per cent decline in their sales due to early shop closure. Karachi has an estimated 150,000-200,000 retail shops.

However, market people think that the vehicles’ load after 8:00pm on the roads had subsided drastically but extension of business hours would again create congestion on the roads.

On the other hand, there has been no relief to the masses from the KESC’s unannounced load-shedding in the scorching heat no matter when shopkeepers open and close their shops. Majority of the areas are still facing worst power breakdowns. Closure of shops at 8:00pm has virtually failed to make any impact.

It has been noticed that all the shops located inside the big regular markets completely violated the Sindh government’s order and continued to operate their business till 00.00 hours (midnight).

The chief KESC spokesman Sultan Hassan said that the utility had been able to save 70-90MW since June 9, after closure of shops at 8:00pm, claiming that it had made a difference in maintaining frequent power supplies in the megapolis.

However, he said that he had no information about extension of business hours till 9:00pm and he cannot anticipate its impact on the power distribution system before its implementation.

He said that the load-shedding problem had actually occurred in Karachi from Thursday owing to suspension of 200MW supply from Wapda and increase in consumption of power in the city by 100MW owing to the heat wave as against 2,100MW consumption. It means that the city is currently facing power shortage of 300MW.

However, he did not agree that the consumers had suffered frequent breakdown from June 9 till Wednesday after saving of 70-90MW of power owing to early shop closure. There was frequent supply of power from the company and internal problems like cable and transformers’ faults, grid problems and line-tripping are not considered load-shedding.