Daily Times

Prime Minister Imran Khan had announced phased-wise relaxation in the coronavirus lockdown to resume business activities and keep the economy running; however, several businesses, like garments, footwear, cosmetics, etc would remain closed to contain the spread of the virus. However, e-commerce offers a perfect solution to mitigate the sufferings of traders caused by lockdown at one hand and offer goods and services to customers at their doorstep with consuming less energy and time at the other hand.

Businesses, small traders and shopkeepers have suffered huge losses due to the unprecedented coronavirus lockdown. These small traders might not be able to bear further losses and should find out alternate to keep their businesses running and meet their expenses.

Jehangir Khan – a trade union representative in Rawalpindi – said, the traders of garments and shoes are looking for Eid session throughout the year, they have purchased stock for this season and that they will lose everything if the Eid season went unaddressed. Therefore, he said, government should allow them to open their shopping malls and shops as well.

To a question regarding online business, he added, in this short period of time it is not possible for every small traders to develop online presence. Understanding and developing online business takes time. Additionally, he said, customers do not trust the online shopping, unless the customers started purchasing online traders will not move to the online platforms.

Pakistan, though is a late entrant in ecommerce, however, a massive rise in online shopping and payments trends has been observed in last few years. Large number of online shops are developed in recent past offering almost every kind of item. Young generation is relatively excited about the emerging medium but also having some concerns that bar them from doing shopping online.

“Once I purchased few shirts from an online shop, when I received the order, even the design and color of the shirts was not as I ordered”, Hasseb Ali, 29, narrated.

He added, most of the online shops are doing frauds and send sub-standard items at high price. For sending it back to them customers have to spend hundreds of rupees again as courier charges and even it is not sure that whether he will receive the true product or not.

Provincial Government of Sindh took stick measure to prevent and contain the spread of coronavirus and traders of Pakistan’s largest city Karachi observed hurdle due to the lockdown. Last week, traders were allowed to do business online but the traders shows concern over the decision of allowing them to trade online and said, the most of the traders are unaware of the online business techniques and even some of them don’t know how to use a smart phone.

According to ecommerce statistics, 40 percent of the worldwide internet users have bought some form of products or goods online via desktop computer, mobile phone, tablet or other online devices.

Khurram Shahzad, 43, when he is abroad, he prefers to use online forms for shopping he is sure that the item purchased online will be as it seen online and quality will not be compromised. Comparatively he prefers shopping physical in Pakistan due to the lack of trust.

Moreover, there are some areas of Pakistan which are currently even don’t have internet facilities, even in the major cities like Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad and others the internet service provided in very poor quality and expensive as compare to other countries, that’s why traders and consumers prefer to sale and purchase physically, he maintained.

Shahzad added, that people avoid online shopping because it lacks the element of physical examination by the buyer, and the chances of forgery are also present along with the possibility of security risk that the buyer’s personal and financial information might be misused.

To a question regarding data security, Ms. Hija Kamran – Program Manager at Media Matters for Democracy, a non-government organization working on digital rights- said, we don’t have any law to protect digital data of citizens. Recently the civil society members shown concerns over the draft of “Data Protection Policy Bill” because instead of protecting citizens right that proposed bill will further strengthen the government department to have access to the personal information of the citizen.

The youth of tribal district on time to time stageprotest demonstrations over the unavailability of 3G and 4G internet in merged tribal districts due to which their studies are being impacted badly.

Shah Hussain – student of a public sector university hailing from South Waziristan- said, they don’t have internet to take their classes and government is advising to do sale purchase online. Before advising such methods, the government should be aware of worst condition of tribal districts.

Hija Kamran – Program Manager at Media Matters for Democracy, a non-government organization working on digital rights – said, first the government should examine that how much we have developed the online system, we don’t have reliable and economical internet service in our country. He added, during the lockdown people are worried due to their worst economic conditions and government is advising them to purchase the costly internet service to work from home and to do shopping online.

“If my mother or domestic servants have to do shopping, they will definitely go to market physically for it due to the lack of digital resources or awareness”, Ms. Hija added.