SIALKOT, Dec 11: The business community here has expressed grave concern over the acute shortage of 'split leather', which was hampering the production and exports of leather gloves and other leather products.

The senior vice chairman of Pakistan Gloves Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PGMEA) Suhail Masood said that leather gloves and leather goods industry was suffering from great financial crisis due to prolonged non-availability of raw material, especially "split leather", and local manufacturers were forced to close their units, rendering thousands of daily waged workers jobless.

The chairman Muhammad Safdar Sandal of leather committee of Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) said that the split leather was being smuggled to China for the last one year and this illegal practice was resulted in the acute shortage of split leather in Sialkot and other cities.

He said the non-availability of split leather has hampered the production of gloves. He said that it is feared that the export orders of leather gloves to Sialkot exporters (worth millions of US dollars) would soon be cancelled, putting this industry in further financial crisis, which earns the foreign exchange worth billions of rupees annually.

The Pakistan Gloves Manufacturers and Exporters Association (PGMEA) and Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI), in their separate meetings have urged the federal government to halt the "export' of "split leather" to China and other countries, immediately for saving Sialkot's export-oriented leather gloves and leather goods industries from disaster, besides ensuring the maximum supply of split leather in the markets.