Retailers of mobile phone SIM cards on Friday staged a protest against the government's move to ban the retailing of the cards, saying the step will deprive over 1.5 million vendors of their jobs in the country. Over a dozen protestors holding banners and placards rejected the government move saying the policymakers must reconsider this decision.

Holding protest outside Karachi Press Club, retailers feared that the ban will affect nearly 30,000 retailers in Karachi alone. The vendors across the country may face billions of rupees loss due to the ban. Talking to Business Recorder, President of Karachi Mobile SIMs Association (KBSA), Mukhtiar Khan said, "the franchises of different cellular companies, whose SIMs the retailers are selling, refused to take the SIMs back after the government ban." "The retailers, which have been rendered jobless, continued to provide the cellular companies with about Rs 5 billion of profit a month until the ban," he said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2012