KARACHI, Dec 28: The city will feel the full impact of the complete shutter-down situation in two or three days, when the stocks of perishable commodities such as vegetables, fruit, dairy products and poultry goods are exhausted.
An acute shortage of fruit and vegetables is likely to hit the city since the New Sabzi Mandi, which is the only wholesale facility servicing Karachi, remained entirely closed on Friday.
“No supplies came to the Mandi and neither were any consignments sent to the retailers,” said Waqar Shaikh, a member of Wholesale Vegetable Market’s Welfare Association. He told Dawn that the Mandi received, on the average, at least 200 truckloads of produce every day from Sindh, Balochistan and other parts of the country, which was then taken by retailers into the city.
However, said Mr Shaikh, there has been no trading at the Mandi since Thursday evening and no produce was received on Friday. “This situation of a complete shutdown is likely to prevail for another couple of days,” he said, adding that the Mandi wholesalers’ current stocks amounted to merely 15 to 20 truckloads of fruit and vegetables. “This has never happened since the inception of the New Sabzi Mandi seven years ago,” he said. “The shortage in the supply of produce will definitely lead to an unwarranted increase in the price of fruit and vegetable in all parts of the city.”
According to Mr Shaikh, the city’s retailers had enough stocks to last three or four days and would sell their commodities at exorbitant prices. “It may take over a week before the market stabilises,” he said.
The president of the Fruit and Vegetables Exporters’ Association, Mateen Siddiqui, told Dawn that this season had been marked by very good fruit and vegetable crops, in terms of both quantity and quality. “The supplies to the market have come to a halt since the transporters don’t want to put their vehicles at the risk of being set ablaze by mobs,” he said. “While the closure of the Mandi has led to an acute shortage of fruit and vegetables in the city, it has also caused losses worth millions of rupees to both the growers and exporters.”
Mr Siddiqui was of the view that had the government responded promptly to the violence, the situation would not have come to such a pass.
Poultry feed shortage
Similarly, the chief of the Poultry Association, Abdul Maroof Khan, told Dawn that it was inevitable that this industry, too, would be hit hard by the shutdown.
“There has been no feed or water in several poultry farms for the past 24 hours and if these conditions prevail for another day, the flocks may die,” he said. “Currently, the situation is like that of a wheel-jam strike.” Mr Khan said that the essential supplies to the farms had come to a halt due to the absence of transport. “Even the feed manufacturing units are closed and there will be an acute shortage of feed in the coming days,” he predicted.
According to Mr Khan, around 450,000 to 500,000 birds were brought from the farms into the city every day. “The farmers will incur huge losses since the market would be flooded with accumulated stocks,” he pointed out.
The problems faced by the citizens, including the transporters, are worsened by the fact that all petrol and gas stations in the city remained closed for the entire day. Worryingly, this has forced two major ambulance services to curtail their operations.
Faisal Edhi of the Edhi Trust told Dawn that the operation of their ambulances had been badly hit by the fuel shortage. “We are able to put in only 40 ambulances to meet the emergencies across the city,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Petroleum Dealers Association complained that most of the city’s petrol pumps and gas station had gone dry since the carriers of the oil marketing companies could not make deliveries in face of the total shutdown. However, the staff at some gas stations said that their owners had closed the businesses for fear of mobs damaging their outlets.
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