Industrialists won't be able to pay salaries if lockdown continues: SAI chief

President of SITE Association of Industry (SAI), Suleman Chawla, said that due to the lockdown, industrial activities had come to a halt, and if this situation continued for the next 10 to 15 days the industrialists would be unable to pay workers their salaries.
He urged the chief minister of Sindh to provide funds from SESSI and Workers Welfare Fund to the SAI so that the association could compensate at least 500,000 workers' families and provide them free ration and medical facilities.
He said that industries of Karachi contributed billions of rupees to the SESSI, the EOBI and the Workers Welfare Fund, and these billions were lying idle in the banks, and this was the time to utilize these funds to compensate the workers. He said that these funds could be used to support the workers of those factories that had not taken any loans from banks and relied on their own capital.
Suleman Chawla said that the extension in the lockdown period would affect the workers and their families the most. It was the duty of the Sindh government to utilize the funds collected for the benefit of the workers at this point in time.