Kashmir traders in protest mode

Srinagar: The business community in Kashmir is desperately looking for some quick intervention from the Centre to save them from banks and financial institutions, who have been pressing them to pay back loans.
“We are seriously thinking of hitting the streets if the Central government does not intervene to save us from the present mess,” said Ali Muhammad Wani, a florist in the Tangmarg area of North Kashmir. Following 5 August 2019, Kashmir’s business community has been badly hit, especially traders in the tourism business. “In the past two months, we have been pleading with the government to bring us out of this mess, but it is paying no attention. They want us to come on the streets,” said Khurshid Ahmad Bhat, a trader in Srinagar who claimed that with March about to begin, there is no hope for bookings for spring tourism.
Recently, when different banks and financial institutions tried to recover the loans with the help of police, the trading community in a paid advertisement in local newspapers, tried to get the attention of the Central government for urgent intervention. Office bearers of the Kashmir Chambers of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) told this newspaper that the Centre should come to the rescue of locals, especially the business community, as their present condition has become unbearable.
Senior businessmen in Srinagar city are so frustrated that they say there is no other alternative, but to hit the streets as their survival was at stake.
“We are dying under the weight of involuntary failures, the failures that have been imposed on us due to lack of management skills, sympathy, interest, and concern,” the head of a business house in Srinagar said.
Dozens of heads of different business hubs told this newspaper that they will soon jointly decide what to do if the Centre continues to ignore and “treat them with contempt”. According to them, the recent message published in local newspapers was the last request by them for the Centre’s intervention.
Though Lt. Governor Girish Chandra Murmu had assured the business community that he will take up the matter with the Centre, so far nothing concrete has happened. In Kashmir, half of the industrial units are already closed and most of the functional units are on the brink of closure due to the uncertainty prevailing here.