ANWAR KHAN

KARACHI: With imports and exports at a halt because of the transporters’ strike, supplies of essential commodities are slowing down across the country.

Traders slammed the strikers for the delay in foods supplies to the city and upcountry with imports brought to a halt as thousands of containers of imported cargo are clogged at the seaports. Commodity dealers fear the strike is likely to trigger a price hike of the essential commodities ahead of Ramadan just two weeks away.

The chairman of the All Karachi Tajir Ittehad, Atiq Mir, said that the strike has already hiked freight charges by 25 percent. Waheed Ahmed, patron-in-chief of the All Pakistan Fruits and Vegetables Exporters- Importers and Merchant Association, said that the strike has badly affected the supplies of the perishable products. The strike is hurting supply of garlic and potatoes at their peak season, he said. The transportation chaos produced by the strike will badly affect traders’ seasonal earnings, especially since the mangoes season is arriving and the fruit will have to be exported immediately.

The spokesman of the Pakistan Goods Transporters Alliance, Agha Jawad Raza, told Business Recorder that talks with Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah remain inconclusive. The transporters have accepted the chief minister’s plea that they should not block roads, but they are sticking to the strike, he said.

He repeated the transporters’ demand for reversal of the Sindh High Court’s order for a total ban on the entry of traffic with heavy loads into the city, reminding once again that the late Justice, Baghwandas had ordered restriction of heavy traffic on the city’s roads between 6 am and 11 am, not a 24-hour ban. He pleaded for the Supreme Court’s reversal of the new verdict.