WHILE Karachi faces many a civic problem all year round, in recent times one has seldom heard about meat-based meals not being cooked for a few days in the Sindh capital. It happened half a century back. On March 4, 1974 it was reported that the day before nearly two-thirds of meat shops in the city remained closed as a result of which people had to resort to cooking vegetables at home. Apparently, over the week there was an increase of more than 20 percent in the prices of meat dishes at hotels and restaurants. A number of relatively less expensive eateries had already closed shop since they were not doing desirable business due to the high rates of raw meat, which was the reason that the owners of the eating houses cited for their price increase. They also complained that their permanent suppliers were not supplying meat to them on a regular basis.

On March 5, after a discussion with meat-sellers, the deputy commissioner of the city forwarded recommendations to the Sindh government for resolving the crisis. Although he did not reveal his recommendations to the media, he was hopeful that it would resolve the issue to the satisfaction of both meat-sellers and consumers. It was learnt that the government might agree for a slight increase in the prices. At least 2,000 out of the 3,000 shops kept their shutters down on March 4 and the butchers continued charging more than the controlled rates, that is, Rs11 to Rs12 for mutton per seer and Rs5 to Rs6 for beef per seer. The controlled rates were Rs7 for mutton and Rs3.75 for beef.

As expected, on March 7, poultry wasin great demand in Karachi. People were seen buying chickens in a large number as they feared the situation would continue for a few days. Most of the popular nihari and kebab shops switched over to selling either murgh qorma or murgh nihari. And Burns Road was almost deserted on March 7.

If that was not enough to disturb Karchiites’ peace, on March 9, the railway workers at Karachi City Cantonment and Keamari went on a lightning strike for over five hours. All express and shuttle trains were delayed by about six hours and work at Karachi port suffered, too. The workers belonging to the Labour Union of PWR opted not to work to demonstrate their strength against their rivals, the United Railway Workers Union, the official bargaining agent or PWR, after a little altercation between the two groups.

While this was going on, on March 6, it was announced that the federal government would spend six crore rupees on constructing 2786 multi-storey flats and 78 shops for employees of the central government at various colonies in the city. At the time, 11,000 central government employees [more than 50 percent of which belonged to low-income groups] were without official accommodation and were on the waiting list of the government’s Estate Office. In the first phase of the project, 1,268 flats were being built in Federal Area and Liaquatabad.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2024