Business Community has urged the government to rationalize the number of holidays, which may be restricted to only genuine occasions. The whole country remained shutdown during the long five-day Eid holiday, badly affecting industrial production and export shipment schedules and dragging small businessmen into a severe financial turmoil.
Besides this, wherever the provinces want they announce holidays without any schedule.
Patron in Chief Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (KATI) who is also CEO TDAP S M Muneer has emphasised the need for reviewing the policy for holidays in order to make Pakistan Asian Tiger. He observed that the country is dependent on external flows to keep its fiscal deficit within its target.
He further said that in order to combat various challenges being faced by the nation such as poverty, energy crisis and law and order, Pakistan must curtail a number of holidays as much as possible and follow the footsteps of countries like Malaysia, China and Turkey in order to promote business activities. He said that at a time when the country was in dire need of continuous work to put the economy back on track, some elements in the government was making all out efforts to put it a reverse gear.
He said that the rangers and police had played a very effective role in curbing the forced collection of Zakat and Fitra on the eve of Eid-ul-Fitr. Chariman APTMA S M Tanveer said that last year the country lost exports of around 356 million dollars due to the longest ever holiday spell on the occasion of Eid. He said that the country remained cutoff from the rest of the world throughout the whole week as all kinds of export and manufacturing activities were stopped.
Due to long holidays businesses and trades came to a halt, delaying in meeting export orders, he observed. Former Vice President FPCCI, Zubair Tufail maintained that the country had to suffer a huge financial loss because of 'long and unnecessary' holidays. "The government made it a precedent to declare long holidays just to please government employees," Zubair said, observing that Pakistan's bureaucracy is one of the most incompetent and dishonest in the world.
Tufail said that daily wagers are facing difficulties due to increase in number of holidays and most of the workers left for their hometowns during Eid-ul-Fitr holidays which hampered all business activities. Former Vice President FPCCI Khalid Tawab said that the government was making important decisions without taking stakeholders into confidence.
He said the industrial sector was already facing many serious difficulties, including a high cost of production, a decline in export orders, energy shortages, fragile law and order, and a tough competition in local and export markets. He was of the view that people need to work day and night to make the country a developed nation as done by Bangladesh and China.
He advised the government to avoid such long holidays in future. President KATI Rashid Ahmed Siddiqui said that keeping in view of day by day increase in the cost of production, we have to promote manufacturing sector by providing conducive atmosphere and cheap labour, and number of holidays must be reduced.
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