LAHORE: The Pakistan Chemical Manufacturers Association (PCMA) has urged the provincial governments of Punjab and Sindh to exempt chemical manufacturing units from Section 144, otherwise the production of over 23 essential items including exportable products of textile, garments and leather industries would stop.
The association’s chairman Abrar Ahmad and secretary general Iqbal Kidwai, in a joint request letter sent to the home secretaries of Punjab and Sindh, have pleaded that the chemical industry is contributing Rs35 billion in the form of taxes and $12 billion to the national GDP.
The chemical industry is also providing 0.4 million jobs with an income multiplier of 4.2 and with job multiplies of 7.8, the letter states and claims almost all industries are dependent on the chemical industry for input chemicals to produce their products.
The association identifies about 23 essential products, which would not be produced if the chemical industry doesn’t resume operation to make input-chemicals for them.
These industries include food, pharma, soap, detergents, fertilisers, pesticides, construction, power plants, water treatment plants, export oriented industries like textile, garments, cotton gloves, allied fabrics knitted and woven dyed, home care, body care, health care, sanitisers, hand wash, shampoos, laundry soap, laundry detergent powders and leather industry.
PCMA Chairman Abrar Ahmad informed that currently chemical manufacturers have huge orders piled up from the forward linkage industries, but unfortunately, the chemical industry has not been included in the industries, whose operations are exempted from enforcement of Section 144.
He, therefore, urged the chief ministers of Punjab and Sindh to issue early orders for exemption of chemical manufacturing industry from Section-144 to avoid disruption in supply chain of all essential industries including the export-led industries, which are threatened to be handicapped due to unavailability of input chemicals.
Further delay in this regard would be a big time-lag in their production resulting in huge losses besides absence of essential products needed to protect against the coronavirus, he said.
Ahmad assured chemical units, under the prevailing virus pandemic would be operated with minimum number of staff by strictly adhering to precautionary measures against COVID-19 as per SOPs issued by the relevant regulatory departments of the government.
