A fter four days of violence that reportedly claimed the lives of around 108 people, signs of normalcy returned to the city on Saturday. After a complete shutdown on Friday, a few shopping malls, petrol pumps, small markets in residential areas and roadside groceries, fruits and vegetables vendors carried on with routine business on Saturday as the city partially opened on Saturday morning. The citizens rushed to automated teller machines (ATMs), petrol pumps, grocers and other convenience stores, as everything had remained closed during the ‘day of mourning’.
Usually during strikes, ATMs of different banks remain open, but on Friday, even the ATMs had their shutters down in anticipation of violence or arson, causing extreme difficulties for the citizens out of cash. Public transport, including buses, minibuses, rickshaws, taxis and coaches, were also seen on the roads but only with a few passengers. Attendance in private institutions and government departments also remained thin.
A fresh wave of violence surged through the city on late Tuesday evening, after which cross firing started between political rivals in many areas of Orangi, Baldia and North Nazimabad towns. For the first time, the miscreants used mortars, grenades and petrol bombs to set houses on fire and also attacked passenger buses and ambulances carrying the injured. As soon as reports of violence in some areas emerged, fear gripped most parts of the city and public transport and private vehicles vanished from the roads and major markets hotels and stores closed down.
Labourers, daily wagers, construction workers and fruits, vegetables and other vendors on pushcarts suffered the most. Street children, beggars and the homeless, living on footpaths, under the bridges and in slums, who usually beg for food from hotels and philanthropist organisations were unable to find food and had to sleep with empty stomachs for two nights.
Even the youth, who throng roads in almost every locality to play cricket on strike calls, were nowhere to be seen during the past two days as the city completely shutdown. The level of fear may be gauged from the fact that the small convenient shops, located along residential area streets and cigarette-cabins, that remain open during violence in the city, were too closed.
