Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) President, Shahid Naseem Khokhar has expressed deep concern and dissatisfaction over the proposal of five-day working week/two weekly holidays in the name of energy conservation. Shahid Naseem Khokhar, in a statement, said that last year, the practice of five-day working week particularly for banks, customs and ports had severely hampered business activities.
On the demand of business community, Customs and Ports were de-notified while banking services remain unavailable on Saturdays. He forcefully urged the government to exclude banks, Customs and Ports from observing five-day week. He said that nowhere in the world banks are closed when the commerce and industrial sector is operative, even in the countries where five-day week is observed, and commercial banks remain open on Saturday.
He said that exporters maintaining trade ties with Gulf countries faced additional elimination of Friday being observed as holiday in Gulf. The same is for customs and ports and they cannot be close down for two days as their closure will stop valuable exports of this country and timely clearance of imported goods.
Khokhar stressed that conservation is the need of the time but the same must not be done while penalising commerce and industry as ultimately, this will severely impede the business activities leading to decline in government's revenue and economic instability. He was of the view that to curtail government expenditure and conserve energy, austerity measures should be taken to minimise and control the management and administrative costs, however, two-weekly-holidays would not be a good practice in vogue and would inculcate to indolent attitude of public sector staff.