Anwar Ali was 20 years old when his poor father from a suburb of the federal capital, made him a quli or loader to help customers carry their heavy shopping at the weekly bazaars. That was thirty years ago. Now he is 50 and has no work because qulis or tokri-walas, as they are called, have been barred from entering the new weekly bazaars of Islamabad.

The restriction, imposed by CDA, is affecting not only Anwar but also 300 other qulis who used to make a living from serving customers in the Sunday, Friday and Tuesday bazaars of the city.

These new bazaars built at a cost of Rs300 million at H-9/3 and G-6 sectors with better organisation and more facilities for the convenience of the consumers have introduced trolleys in place of tokris (baskets) dispensing with the services of the qulis who used to carry the tokris on their head. The modernisation has cost these qulis their bread and butter. And they are not the only victims of this change. The makers of the wicker baskets, i.e., the tokris have also lost their clientele – the qulis. Has the CDA any plan to rehabilitate these labourers and craftsmen or providing alternative source of income to them?

It looks like a miniature globalisation in which local craftsmen, who were in the business for decades have been made idle and a traditional craft is going to die. It may be asked if it was necessary to turn a traditional Mandi (market) into a super store. Yet there is no bar on the qulis pushing the trolleys if buyers so like.

But in these hard times, consumers too would like to save some money as the trolleys are available free of cost and easy to wheel around. Though this saving of Rs20 to Rs40 or 50 may not mean much to the buyer, a quli was making anywhere between Rs300 to Rs1,000 per day from ten shoppers, which meant food for his family besides other small needs. After the development of new bazaars, it has come down to Rs300 to Rs500 only.

The new weekly bazaar at Sector G-6 has 1,800 stalls and there are 2,700 stalls at Sector H-9/3. The per day rent of each stall is Rs15 i.e., around Rs0.675 million for CDA every Sunday. The monthly income accounts for Rs2.02 million alone from these two bazaars.

But the Deputy Director-General Municipal Administration, Syed Mustafeen Kazmi, said these bazaars were public welfare schemes and CDA was not making any money from them.

The slow down in Pakistan economy has already been started and it is expected that the growth may fall to around 3 per cent by end of June 2009 from 5 per cent last year. The poverty incidence increased, mainly due to high inflation and higher food prices in past couple of years.

Using two years poverty figures (2004-06) based on the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM), a panel of Pakistan’s top economists has already hinted that the two years so-called economic stabilisation programme, is expected to send approximately 8 to 10 million more households below the poverty line with addition of 1 million to the number of unemployed in 2008-09. Among them would be these poor and voiceless tokri (basket) weavers and qulis. The CDA could help them by extending them small loans to start their own stalls in the bazaars so that progress does not translate into starvation for these daily wage earners.

khanmubarak@yahoo.com