CURTAINS FALL

After August 5 shutdown, most of the courier and the parcel delivery companies working with the e-commerce outlets have closed forcing almost 500 young men to joblessness, reports Saifullah Bashir

- Saifullah Bashir

With the resume in his backpack, Suhail Par-vaiz, 27, roams around the city for most of the day to find a job. Till August 5, he was a decent earner and overnight he lost his job.

Express Bees, the company Parvaiz was working with, asked him not to come office till the resumption of the internet. Son of a street vendor, he had joined the organisation in February 2019. Less than half a year later, he lost the job.

“Our work is wholly dependent on the internet. Customers book their orders online and we used to deliver them and earn our livelihood,” Suhail said. “Since the internet is suspended I couldn’t earn a penny.”

Around 80 youth were working for Express Bees at its two branches and all of them are living hard days. “I used to deliver more than 100 parcels daily so that I could earn more but now I have no work,” said Suhail. Since then he is trying to get any alternate job but is yet to find one.

Now he is killing his time by sitting with a coppersmith friend, who pays him nothing. “I spend a full day with him so that my parents do not land in stress because of my joblessness.”

Mohammad Hayat, 28, an old city resident was Suhail’s colleague, earning a decent Rs 9000 a month. To feed his family, he started selling Momos, a Chinese fast food.