Almost all steel re-rolling mills in Sindh and Balochistan have been closed owing to the ban on construction of high-rise buildings, said Association of Builders and Developers (ABAD) Chairman Hassan Bakshi on Monday. He said that nearly 25,000 had lost their jobs due to the closure of the mills. He said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan had banned construction of multi-story buildings in Karachi on a ‘wrongly-depicted water crisis report by Karachi Water and Sewerage Board’. He lamented that 500,000 workers had been rendered jobless due to the ban on construction in Karachi. Moreover, he said that the Sindh government had not taken any step to resolve water issue despite the passage of 19 months. He said that the Supreme Court of Pakistan has allowed construction of ground plus six floor buildings but the Water Commission had imposed a condition of seeking no objection certificates from civic agencies before the approval of plan by the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA). He said that the commission had instructed the KWSB not to issue any NOC for construction of buildings. He said that more than Rs 600 billion investment had been stopped due to ban and added that hundreds of thousands of people, including architects, engineers associated with the sector, were facing financial crunch. “We fear that after closure of steel re-rolling mills, more allied industries will be closed,” he lamented. Published in Daily Times, November 13th 2018.