The government should allow opening of wholesale and retail markets provided they remained within the parameters of the SOPs. The government should also allow all the industries to start their production forthwith, including downstream industries of export-based enterprises.

These are some of the demands raised by industrialists through a resolution.

President of SITE, Suleman Chawla, called an emergency meeting to discuss the issues pertaining to the industrialists in the current situation.

The meeting was attended by Zubair Motiwala, Saleem Nagaria, Farhan Ashrafi, Younus Bashir, Jawed Bilwani, Tariq Yousuf, Saleem Parekh, Anwer Aziz, Arif Lakhani and others.

After inputs from the industrialists, it was unanimously resolved to ask the Sindh government to realize the precarious situation of the business community of Karachi and to fervently appeal to the government to convert the current strict lockdown into a smart lockdown.

The industrialists also wished to tell the government that Karachi was being discriminated against as only Karachi remained under the lockdown.

They also emphasized that the Holy month of Ramazan is approaching, and this is the biggest sale season for the business community, and closure of markets in these days meant a loss for the whole year.

The resolution also criticized the long conditionality in the salary package. They said that 70 percent of the businesses did not opt for interest-based banking.

Therefore the need of the hour was introduction of zero-interest and cutting down the long list of conditions into one, namely, that banks should accept post-dated cheques. Only this would prove beneficial to the business community.