Rent of shops in the vicinity of Boulton Market, paper market, amd medicine market have increased substantially after December 28 incident, affected shopkeepers told Business Recorder on Tuesday. The affected shopkeepers said that there are a number of shopping centres, including Burhani Centre and Ferozpure Wala Centre where over 150 shops were vacant for last many years.
Beside this, a number of shops were already given on rent about two to three years ago in these shopping centres The affected businessmen said the vacant shops are too small and nobody was willing to get these shops on rent before the incident. However, after the incident affected businesswomen started to locate a place to restart these business as soon as possible. This prompted the owners of shops now to demand Rs 10,000 and above, who were earlier demanding Rs 5000 per month.
The owners of the shops have also started giving notices to old tenants, with whom they do not have formal tenancy agreements, to vacate the shops, the affected businessmen said. Meanwhile, Senator Abdul Hasib Khan said that he has called a meeting of business community on Wednesday, January 6, to discuss the issue of rehabilitation of affected businessmen and decide future line of action as well as collect donations.
City Nazim Mustafa Kamal is likely to participate in the meeting. Hasib said that MQM chief, Altaf Hassan, has directed members of MQM to work for rehabilitation of affected businessmen and leave no stone unturned in helping them. He said that Kamal was working very hard and using all resources to rehabilitate the affected businessmen. On a visit to the area it was foumd that junk dealers were purchasing iron, iron gates of burned buildings, damaged goods at throwaway price and making good money.