The shoe-factory boss has just laid off half of his 70 workers. The businessmen complain that they are losing out to competitors not just in China but in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The mill-owner says higher prices for power and water have added 2 rupees a metre to the cost of producing his cloth, wiping out his thin margins. The drugstore boss complains that, with no electricity from the grid for up to 16 hours a day, the use of diesel generators doubles his energy bills. In Karachi a cotton-mill-owner employing 250 workers, a big rice exporter, the owner of a shoe factory and the head of a family-run chain of small chemist shops (drugstores) all said that rising costs of electricity and water were extreme headaches. They make money only in the face of steep odds, or with help from friends in high places. In this context, the bosses’ virtue-signalling on the Prophet’s birthday is cheap. “After all, where else are they going to get work?” “They get a job and they don’t like to make trouble,” he says. One Karachi textile boss, who employs more than 500 people, puts it bluntly. Good jobs even for skilled labourers are hard to find. By their own admission, they see malingerers everywhere. Few employers provide more than the stingiest health care. “If they are sick, they think: who will pay?” “People are scared all the time,” he says. Mr Hussain had to fork out 3,000 rupees for treatment.
Karachi does not have such administration. In municipalities with tolerable administration, the disease is largely avoidable-a question of draining the pools of stagnant water in which the mosquitoes that spread the disease may breed. Last year the cobbler and his wife were struck down with dengue fever. Afaq Hussain has worked in the same backstreet shoe workshop hammering on soles for 32 years.
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