While condemning the outburst of terrorist activity in Karachi in the last few weeks and lamenting huge business losses in its aftermath, a number of frustrated businessmen have expressed grave concern over the grim prospects of revival of normal business activity in the near future.
Of course, understandable is the predicament of the business community, in general, on the damage and disruptions caused by the five terrorist onslaughts in May and the ensuing strikes.
This has reference in particular to those among them, claiming to have had export orders in hand but failing to fulfil their commitments, evidently because of the disturbed conditions.
They have attributed their misfortune to business closures for several days in a row due to lawlessness, protest strikes and power failures, besides setbacks in allied spheres of economic activity, such as water shortage.
Since all major industrial units hardly managed to operate with a skeleton workforce, production must have suffered a severe shortfall, thereby resulting not only in failure to fulfil export commitments but also in adding to shortage of essential commodities in the market.
All this put together, should explain the strong appeal made by many from among the business community to the government to come to their rescue through extraordinary measures to protect particularly mosques, Imambargahs, railway stations, airports and public places, prevent repetition of similar tragedies, and to apprehend the criminals.
It will also be noted that while making such a desperate appeal to the government to take concrete steps to overcome lawlessness in the city, they warned of the consequences of any further delay in restoration of normal business activity.
Needless to point out, such apprehensions owe a great deal to the reluctance on the part of prospective investors to stake their money even in most attractive ventures.
Moreover, what appears to be worrying an increasing number of Karachi-based businessmen is the grim scene of the disillusioned industrialists either closing down their units or shifting them to safer locations in the interior of Sindh or in Punjab.
This much for the predicament of the industrialists and businessmen in Karachi, which is, of course, quite understandable.
As for the common citizens, they also happen to share these fears because of the simple fact that too frequent disturbance in business and economic activity is bound to adversely affect their life.
For one thing, disruption in supplies, resulting from suspension of economic activity, immediately leads to increase in prices, particularly items of daily use. This invariably serves as the opportunity for the unscrupulous elements, hoarders, profiteers and black-marketers, to make hay while the sun shines.
It will thus be noted that an overwhelming number of the city population, deriving their sustenance, directly and indirectly, from trade and industry, suffer unbearable hardship from the cut in wages following man-hour losses in industry and trade and dislocation in odd jobs generated from business activity.
As such, the resulting erosion of the purchasing power of the consumers, keeps adding more and more to the misery of the low income groups abounding in this hub of the nation's commerce and industry.
Of course, allied to this is the grim reality of Karachi brimming with the jobless from all over the country.
In view of still fewer job opportunities opening up elsewhere despite ambitious poverty-reduction plans, the unemployed surplus from other parts of the country continues to throng the city.
This should leave little to doubt from what looks like an invasion of beggars, drug peddlers and petty criminals. No wonder, some of them can get easily hooked to terrorism in its various manifestations.
All in all, the serious disturbance caused in the consumer base of Pakistan's largest industrial city can certainly make its impact felt, sooner or later, all over the country.
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