About 1,000 containers, trailers and trucks have been seized for use as barricades around the marches, halting supplies into Rawalpindi and Islamabad (Express Tribune).
What has stopped
Supplies from Karachi, Faisalabad and Sargodha to the twin cities. The goods affected include vegetables, fruit, dry fruit, medicines and other essentials.
Sajid Khan, vice-president of the Wholesale Dealers Association, said goods would “start rotting and become unfit for consumption if they remained inside sealed containers for 72 hours.”
What that produces
| | | |—|—| | Wholesale markets | record slump | | Perishables | spoiling within 72 hours in sealed containers | | Loading and unloading workers | thousands out of work | | Container rents | rising | | Vehicles | being hidden in remote areas by dealers | | Possible price effect | up to 100pc increases by week’s end |
Haji Iqbal of the Goods Transport Federation was also quoted.
The point that should not be lost
These are not empty containers. They are loaded vehicles carrying third-party cargo — food and medicine bought by traders and shopkeepers who are not party to any march.
This newspaper reported on 12 September that the All Pakistan Goods Transport Owners Association had written to the Islamabad IG over about 500 loaded vehicles impounded for five days, and had alleged that some were released only after police took money. That allegation remains unsubstantiated and no inquiry has been reported.
The number has since roughly doubled, and the cargo has now been sitting long enough to spoil.
The arithmetic nobody is doing
The finance minister put the cost of protest shutdowns at Rs120 billion a day and called it “self-inflicted pain”.
Food rotting inside government-seized containers is not a cost imposed by marchers. It is a cost imposed by the method chosen to stop them, and it lands on wholesalers, daily-wage loaders and households buying vegetables.
What this is for
Security arrangements around four long marches in the twin cities. Jamaat-i-Islami’s chief is due in Rawalpindi on 22 September; PTI marches on the 27th.
What is not established
No official figure has been published for how many vehicles have been seized, for how long they will be held, or whether compensation is contemplated. Neither the Punjab government nor the Islamabad administration has responded to the traders’ complaints.
[Image: PPI via The Express Tribune]
