The call for strike action by Karachi's business community on 5 April was successful as all shops, from departmental stores to small one-man operations including Paan shops, remained closed in the financial capital of the country. The raison d'etre for the strike call was not serious deficiencies in infrastructure, notably the continuing severe shortage of energy or the high cost of borrowing or indeed the failure of the government to control terrorist attacks, but extortion.
The fact that small shopkeepers who do not have a large inventory and each day's sales may well account for a major portion of their monthly income opted to shut down their business for the day in protest against extortion by gangs, was symptomatic of their perception that they had exhausted all other avenues of complaint. That their concerns were valid and their demands appropriate was reflected by the fact that apart from the PPP, all other parties including the coalition partners of the PPP in Sindh, namely MQM and ANP, as well as those who are not part of the government such as Jamaat-i-Islami and Sunni Tehrik, supported the traders.
Unfortunately, however, there was a split among the traders based on their size. The large traders who are members of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) did not support the strike action as the KCCI leadership, after having called for the strike, postponed it, perhaps heeding to the government's request to allow it time to take requisite action. Had it not been for the support from the political parties, particularly the MQM, the strike may not have been so pervasive.
While the office bearers of the KCCI are largely industrialists and big trading houses, as opposed to shopkeepers, and are better poised financially to hire private security guards for their places of residence and business, which may not be an option for a small shopkeeper, yet many an industrialist and his family member has been the victim of kidnappings for ransom as well as of car/phone/purse snatching. The fact that they opted not to go on strike, according to the KCCI President and Chairman Businessmen Group Siraj Kassim Teli, was because they wished to remain engaged with the government in trying to resolve all serious issues instead of resorting to one-day strike calls that had achieved nothing in the past except loss of millions of rupees to the economy. There is some logic to this rationale; however, extortion on a scale that is evident in Karachi in spite of this issue being brought to the notice of the government repeatedly, reflects the obvious fact that the general perception of the Karachi traders is that all other avenues to resolve this major issue plaguing them have been exhausted.
What exactly must the government do to resolve this issue? First off, Karachi boasts of a 35,000 strong police force. With a population of 15 million this implies one policeman per 430 people - a good statistic. However it has been revealed that over 10,000 policemen are engaged in providing security to VIPs and VVIPs. If one takes the entire Sindh Assembly in this category that gives a rather disturbing figure from the perspective of the common man: each Sindh Assembly member has policemen deployed to provide protection, while deployment is not equally provided to all assembly members and the statistic does not include the Governor and others who are being provided security, including the need to provide security to visiting dignitaries from Islamabad. By and large, the Karachi police remain focused on VIP duty. There is talk of adding onto this VIP security force which, if undertaken, would further skew police deployment to provide security to the VIPs at a cost to providing security to the public. This must change. Our elected representatives must accept their primary responsibility to their electorate: a more equitable distribution of police force between the elected representatives, the traders and the general public.