Millions of daily wage workers in the formal and informal sector went without a single rupee in the last three days.
Many were associated with the textile sector while others worked in the tanneries and in the construction industry and as pushcart dealers, and bus and rickshaw drivers.
According to the Deputy General-Secretary of the National Trade Unions Federation, Nasir Mansoor, around two million of the workforce was directly or indirectly working in the textile sector in the city.
He said that a worker who earned Rs7000 a month and who happened to miss work for three consecutive days for one reason or the other suffered for three continuous months to overcome the deficit.
The deputy general-secretary said that hardly six percent of the total workforce remained unaffected monetarily in the event of a law and order situation while the rest had to contend with a loss in income.
He said that the workforce in the transport business was the worst sufferers during the disturbances.
The General-Secretary of the Hosiery Workers Association, Nawab Ali, told this scribe that 70 percent of workers in the hosiery sector in Karachi earned on the basis of the number of pieces they produced in a day.
The ones who could not turn up for work missed their wages while those who could not go home worked for hours on end filling in for their absent colleagues, he said.
“I have learnt that there were some workers who could not go home after their shifts and so they worked in the factories for 50 to 55 hours in the last three days to deliver the shipment on time,” Ali said.
He said that the exporters wanted to deliver the shipments on time no matter what the situation was.
It was almost the same story in the sector of tanneries and leather garments where 20,000 worked on the basis of per-piece production, according to Malik Amjad Awan.
