All Karachi Tajir Ittehad (AKTI) on Saturday rejected the government's decision to close markets at 8 pm in evening, saying the violence had badly reduced trade activities in the city and early closure of businesses would further hit them financially.
Talking to Business Recorder, Chairman AKTI, Atiq Mir urged the government to rethink its decision of early markets closures, saying the trade had already suffered billion of rupees loss and such a forced move would bankrupt them. He also termed the national energy conference which Chief Minister Punjab had held in Lahore as a "joke" to the nation, saying the bureaucrats had wrongly briefed the prime minister with a suggestion if markets were early closed the electricity could be sufficed for other residential use.
He warned if the government tried to enforce the "bad" decision on traders in a bid to close the markets early by 8 pm, traders would offer untiring resistance to foil such an attempt. He said 80 percent markets of the country were closed by 8pm as routine, yet the power shortage persisted to cause big loss to national exchequer. "The markets closures by 8 pm will not solve the power shortage problem, rather the government have to take immediate steps to install electricity projects to get rid of the power scarcity," Atiq Mir suggested.