Industrialists have asked the government to rethink over its plan to have two weekly holidays, by declaring Saturday as off day. They urged the government to take appropriate measures in consultation with the business community to address the prevailing energy crisis instead of resorting to two-holiday plan.
Chairman Korangi Association of Trade and Industry (Kati), Razzak Hashim Paracha and Leader of Business Community S .M. Munir strongly opposed the proposed plan of the federal government to have two holidays in a week aimed at conserving electricity and doing away with the load shedding.
They said the decision, if implemented, would be counter productive and affect industrial production, which is already under tremendous pressure due to several other factors. The export orders could not be delivered timely and delays would badly affect the exports of Pakistan.
They urged the government to consider alternative measures for saving electricity and also consider measures for enhancing power generation capacity. A prominent industrialist, Fazar Ahmed, proposed that to overcome the energy crisis the holiday could be observed on rotational basis in different areas instead of two weekly holidays. Munir Sultan urged the government not to implement the two-holiday plan.
Another industrialist, Khalid Munir said that the additional weekly holiday would create many problems like high cost of production due to additional cost of wages, declining export order due to disturbance of production schedule, less wages to daily-wagers creating anxiety among them and many others problems, besides the proportional loss of government revenue.