The trajectory of Pakistan’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been more a response to the whims and wishes of the trading community than a response to the coronavirus. With the first cases popping up in the country, the government was slow to act in implementing a lockdown to curb the spread of the disease.
When it finally did, not only was there continued mixed messaging from the center, it became clear that pressure from traders and trading lobbies was starting to get to the federal government, and a premature easing of the lockdown was on the cards despite cases continuing to rise and testing capacity remaining low.
Traders from all segments of the business community were beginning to become agitated by the lockdown. The lockdown had not even been in place for a full month when the government announced it was beginning the phasing out process already, announcing a ‘smart lockdown’ designed to get businesses back to work, and address the loss in income and mass unemployment that would have been a result of a complete lockdown.
The much touted smart lockdown, which was suppose to be the innovation that had put Prime Minister Imran Khan on the global map as a world leader, eased restrictions for a number of business sectors, and put the trading community back into the middle of the fray for four days a week from 9 AM to 5 PM with loose instructions to follow Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) with a threadbare threat to reimpose a lockdown if SOPs were not followed. Traders, eager to make profits from the inevitable upcoming Eid shopping sprees, were quick to promise SOPs would be followed.
What the government was hoping for was for people to exercise caution, instead what was released was a terrifying wave of Eid shopping that left the government overwhelmed with what to do, and traders unable to implement SOPs because of the sheer volume of people visiting their shops. Even the SOPs launched by the government were not thought out. While shops managed to restrict the number of people entering, the lines outside to get in became hubs for the virus to spread, with pictures of long queues outside fashion retailers making the rounds on social media.
The videos of the lines filled with people standing nose to nose, with masks hanging off their faces caused an uproar. There was fear that the transmission during Eid would cause an upsurge in cases, yet the continued mixed messaging from the center and the assertions by the Prime Minister and the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) head Asad Umar that the virus was a harmless flu had people flocking markets in droves. With such large crowds, even basic SOPs like hand sanitizing for customers and facemasks went unchecked.
Sindh took the violation of SOPs more seriously, shutting down entire markets over violations, while matters in Punjab mostly remained a free for all. In Lahore, for example, commercial markets such as Model Town’s Link road remained clogged for weeks, with police only arriving once to threaten shutting down the market, before leaving without doing anything, and allowing the dangerous conditions to prevail. It was at this point that the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health, Dr Zaffar Mirza, suggested that the government was mulling imposing another lockdown after witnessing the blatant disregard of social distancing regulations by traders. It seemed sense would prevail, but the Prime Minister was not on the same page as his special assistant.
Soon after the disaster of Eid and the smart lockdown, when a reimposition was most expected, the Prime Minister this time announced the lifting of the lockdown with very minimal restrictions, such as a 7 PM shutdown time for markets. Since then, traders have been continuing along with their businesses as if nothing has happened, ignoring the fact that cases in the country are rising by numbers that are some of the highest in the world, and that too with very limited testing capability. And even as Lahore has become a major hotspot for the virus, with no corner of the city left unaffected, it seems that the trading community has not realised the scope of the danger, or are even concerned for themselves.
Are the traders not afraid of Coronavirus?
One of the problems that is seemingly plaguing the trading community is that they are just not taking the coronavirus pandemic seriously. Whether it is willing blindness for the sake of their businesses, the mixed messaging of the government, or the vast proliferation of Whatsapp information, there is little seriousness surrounding the virus. Muhammad Ahmed, President of the Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry, tells Profit that traders simply are not afraid of the virus.
“We wanted to open our businesses as many people were losing their jobs. These are people who work in shops for daily wages. We had requested the traders and shopkeepers to ensure the following of SOPs and necessary precautionary measures to be taken for combating corona,” he explains. The daily labourers schtick has been one that the government has made its central talking point, arguing for livelihoods over lives. Despite the better collective wisdoms of both the medical community and the rest of the world, it seems to be one traders are happy adopting as their own.
The General Secretary of All Pakistan Anjuman e Tajran Naeem Mir was of the opinion that the traders and business class was not afraid of the virus, and feared the unemployment and unavailability of money more than any chance of contracting the virus. “The people having shops and businesses were more afraid of not earning anything at the end of the day. The small shopkeepers are more interested in having customers, and do not want any customer to go back without purchasing anything,” he said.
The president of Lahore Chambers of Commerce and Industries (LCCI), Irfan Sheikh, said that initially, a lot of traders had thought the virus might be a hoax or was not a serious enough disease. But now, with people around them being affected by the disease, it is being taken more seriously. However, this has still not been enough, since business concerns and the economy still seem to be a bigger issue for most traders.
“Coronavirus is no doubt a grave issue, but the economic problems which the traders are facing are also very serious,” the LCCI President tells us. There was a lockdown for three months, and during this time the traders had spent all their savings. Traders, businessmen and shopkeepers had to run their houses as well as had to pay their employees on monthly or daily wages, which made them broke after a lockdown of three months. Even if the situation of corona gets better now, the traders cannot overcome the loss they have met with in the lockdown days.”
Meanwhile, the president of the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Agha Shahab Ahmed Khan, believes that people in Pakistan considered themselves invincible and would not realise the seriousness of the pandemic until it hit them personally. “In our country, people consider themselves heroes and are not afraid, whether they are shopkeepers or anyone else. People will understand only when their own loved ones fall victim to it. The attitude of people towards coronavirus is very irresponsible. People here think that their immune systems are very strong. This approach is wrong.”
Not only is the approach wrong, it is frightening. Except, recent evidence suggests that even those affected by the virus are not taking it seriously, with families of corona patients protesting outside corona wards claiming the virus is a hoax. With such a situation, how can traders or the public be expected to take it seriously, and how much will the government’s mixed messaging cost Pakistan?
At least implement the SOPs
The lack of seriousness, however, is further reflected in the fact that even with the lockdown practically lifted and social distancing non-existent, even the SOPs are not being implemented. To this end, Muhammad Ahmed says this is a problem on the part of shopkeepers, and that the industry is doing its part.
“If we talk about the implementation and following of SOPs, the industries are surely doing that. The SOPs are not being followed on the part of the shopkeepers,” he says. “We have a clear stance on this, there should be a strict crackdown on such shops. The shops not following the SOPs should be sealed and heavy fines should be imposed. We have talked to the traders in Islamabad to strictly follow the SOPs and they are doing so. Shops are having sanitizers, using masks and keeping social distancing.”
“The issue is that there is a difference between the situation inside the shops and outside. The shopkeepers do follow the SOPs inside the shops but with rush and long queues of people outside the brands’, shops cannot be controlled by the shopkeepers and that disturbs the social distancing. People are bumping into each other outside the branded clothes stores and do not maintain distance, and I suggest that this should be managed by the government and administration of the area.”
He has a point. For the implementation of SOPs, the government must not only manage a robust public outreach programme and plaster the walls with literature, they must also ensure through policing that crowds are not milling outside shops or in markets. If the lockdown has been lifted, it is their job to manage people going out and about with government approval. But, the government must also ensure that there is some strictness in the implementation of SOPs, and there are consequences to irresponsibility. Irfan Iqbal Sheikh agrees, and says that traders must also hold each other accountable, and to implement the SOPs, the government and traders had to be on the same page.
“The government and traders should use their human resources together to overcome this situation, and wherever there is a problem of SOPs not being followed, the government and traders’ teams should immediately take action. The government must make sure that they crack down on those not following the rules for the protection of public safety, but traders also have to keep tabs on each other.”
Meanwhile, Agha Shahab was of the opinion that the markets and shops were too small given how large the populations of cities like Lahore and Karachi were, and that some sort of system to control entry of a certain number of people into markets at certain times must be adopted. “Discipline is essential for the implementation of SOPs, which is something we severely lack. When it comes to social distancing, the population is high and the markets and shops are small in size, which leads to a rush situation all the time and social distancing cannot be maintained.”
The government, at least in Punjab, however, seems to be following the line of the Prime Minister and insisting that it is the responsibility of the public and the shopkeepers to fight this disease on their own. The Punjab provincial minister for Trade and Industries, Mian Aslam Iqbal, recently told the media that the responsibility of following the SOPs was on the shoulders of the shopkeepers and traders, and that the government could not be expected to keep track of every single shop. “If any customer visits a shop without wearing a mask, then it is the responsibility of the shopkeeper to provide him a mask,” he said.
“The shopkeeper who cannot provide the mask to his customer can shut down his shop. We will not tolerate anyone who violates the SOPs. If anyone is found in violation, then we will close the whole market. We are giving surprise visits in different markets and also sealing the shops which are not following the SOPs. This is also the responsibility of the business community to spray their markets during those two days when markets are closed. Irresponsible behaviors are causing the spread of Covid-19.”
Was lifting the lockdown really this critical for traders?
Profit has already explained how and why a lockdown was possible. And not just possible, but affordable with a welfare outlook. Since the beginning of the lockdown, there have even been calls for universal basic income, all of which have fallen on deaf ears.
But the government has continuously held that a lockdown is not the solution, even though literally all good advice has repeatedly said it was. And this thinking has pervaded the traders community. “It was imperative to lift up the lockdown because it is not the solution to coronavirus,” says Naeem Munir. “There should be some other way forward to fight corona. If the government had not allowed the opening of small shops, then those shopkeepers would have died of hunger and poverty.”
It is ironic, that people have such fatalistic thinking about people going hungry from a lockdown and yet no fear of an actually fatal disease. The reality is, that the government did not want to do or did not think it was capable of doing the hard work needed to keep people fed during a lockdown, even though, it very much could have been done, as even the government’s own Ehsaas programme is proving with the help of data from the BISP.
But the thinking among trading circles has stuck at a single point, and looking from Prime Minister to trader and from trader to Prime Minister, it has become hard to tell which is which. “It was necessary to end the lockdown,” says Irfan Iqbal Sheikh, before quoting Imran Khan. “Now we need to learn living with corona like people are living and adjusting with other diseases. Lockdown is not the solution. People should now learn to live with this situation.”
Even Agha Shahab, perhaps the most sobre of the people we spoke to for this story, was of the same opinion. “A lockdown could not be maintained, markets are very essential to run the circle of the economy,” he said. “Economic activity cannot be resumed without ending the lockdown. The shopkeepers can bear the loss for up to two months, but later the situation becomes very difficult for them.”
“There are two types of countries in the world. One is capital abundant countries which have capital, and the other are labor abundant countries that do not have money but have human capital,” he explains. “One of our problems is that we have a large population and our overseas Pakistanis, who were the major source of foreign exchange, are also coming back because the corona virus has changed the whole world. It is also a huge challenge for Pakistan’s business community to accommodate our overseas Pakistanis and provide them jobs.”
What are the real issues of traders?
Despite the constant easing in conditions, however, the trading community remains largely unsatisfied, even though it is for them that lockdowns have been eased constantly. Even though the government has been portraying itself as champions of daily wage earners, traders have during this entire time cut workers to make up their profits, since there has undoubtedly been an economic slowdown that has impacted traders like everyone else despite the lockdown being lifted.
“If we look at the economic impact of Corona on traders, many of them have been ruined already. Eid and summer is the biggest shopping season, but with this pandemic, shopkeepers and traders have gone hand to mouth. There is no business at the moment which has not faced a loss of less than fifty percent. If the traders have the intuition of when this pandemic would end, then the situation would have been different, but at present we have no clue of it,” says Muhammad Ahmad.
“In case the lockdown is extended for another month or so, then many shopkeepers and businessmen would have been bankrupted and some could have been defaulters. The government has benefited the industry by giving construction packages, but to make it more fruitful we have requested the government to waive off the condition of identity cards. Our target is to revive those businesses and shops which have gone down during the pandemic and lockdown. Sales tax should also be decreased to single digit. We lack liquidation due to which the issue of damages is arising and we need to resolve it.”
Agha Shahab also told Profit that the issue of demurrage charges is a big issue for importers, and many meetings have been held on this topic in the KCCI. “The goods in containers are stuck on the ports. The foreign companies that have taken over our ports and terminals are doing their own thing. And the government’s agreements with these companies may not have been read properly,” he says.
“We need to support each other in this extraordinary situation. These companies have made huge profits from Pakistan, and now they are not even ready to give any relief to our importers. These companies should also understand how the importer, who is unable to sell his goods due to closure of markets, cannot pay them to retrieve his container. These foreign companies should not play the role of the East India Company. Our government should also visit this issue. The importer is really upset. These companies should wave off the demurrages charges.”
What do the traders want?
Even as the cases in Pakistan continue to rise in unbelievable numbers, with the fifth largest daily count of new cases despite being 27th on the number of tests conducted, the demands of the traders are to go back to pre-corona times as soon as possible.
According to Naeem Mir, the solution is to re-open the business like they were pre-corona. “If the businesses are open the people will be relieved that their shops are open and they can earn their livings. If the shop owner knows that he has limited time to open the shop then his focus will be on having customers instead of following SOPs. Also as the summer season is here, people avoid going out and thus the markets are already free from rush. Moreover, people do not have the buying power at the moment and the entire business is slow.”
This may be one point on which the traders make sense, because it has been argued by experts that restricted shopping timings actually end up spreading the virus more, since more people go to buy products in the same amount of time increasing footfall in shops. A system could be implemented where there are phases for people to visit markets. However, as the summers get hotter, it is true that people will all rush to the markets at coller hours.
“We had also given a proposal to the government that property tax on rental property should be reduced to half and that would give a relief in the rent amount,” says Muhammad Ahmed. “This is a doable mechanism and one also understands it. The utility bills are a huge burden on us and by decreasing tax on it the government can give us more relief. The financial implications of utility bills and rent amount are an issue for us.”
According to Irfan Iqbal Sheikh, the government could not provide any benefits to the traders, but it could impose the lockdown, so there was no choice but to open up the economy. “If there is no activity in the country for one month, according to our estimates, the loss is almost two billion dollars. All types of social classes, whether the traders or labourers, all have been affected by the lockdown. On the other hand, the expenses are the same but due to lockdown the income was zero for all. We had no earnings during lockdown and export orders were also cancelled.”
Agha Shahab said that the job of the government is to govern, not to feed businessmen, and that they should facilitate business rather than giving out handouts. “The traders want the government to do its job and let us do our jobs. Yes, when it comes to small traders, the government should provide bailout packages for small traders. They need to be facilitated in utility bills. People’s purchasing power has decreased while the expenses of traders have not decreased.”
