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KARACHI, Oct 23 (AFP): With millions of quake survivors set to spend the winter outdoors, one of the few beneficiaries is Pakistan's tent industry, already the world's largest, which is seeing business exceed its wildest expectations.
Pakistan has taken the drastic steps of banning any export of tents and buying them urgently from rival India as it struggles to ward off a second wave of deaths after the October 8 catastrophe which killed over 50,000 people.
But many fear that no matter how many extra hours the factories clock in, there may simply never be enough tents.
H Nizamdin and Sons, a leading tent manufacturer in the southern port city of Karachi, has a backlog of 30,000 tents to complete by the end of the month and says it lacks the capacity to produce any more.
"There is huge pressure on us," company manager Mohammad Siddiqui said. "We have refused fresh orders until November."
The tank-topped workers in his factory are stretching and stitching at a frantic pace, churning out hundreds of tents each day.
But Siddiqui said work was held back by the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk and often limit their work.
"In normal circumstances we can even make 1,000 tents a day but not during Ramadan, when we can't force the labourers into extra work," Siddiqui said.
Pakistan says more than three million people lost their homes in the earthquake and, with tents and logistics in short supply, it has declined to promise that all will have makeshift roofs over their heads this winter.
Andrew MacLeod, chief operations officer in the UN emergency response centre in Islamabad, said there were indications that the entire world may not be able to come up with enough tents to confront the humanitarian crisis.
In a cruel economics lesson in supply and demand, there are also signs that companies have been profiteering amid the tragedy.
Sultan Shamsi, the owner of Shamsi Pakistan, another large tent manufacturer, said the prices charged by suppliers had shot up.
Shamsi has an order of 25,000 tents but he said he might not be able to meet it because of a shortage of material.
Major General Farooq Ahmad Khan, Pakistan's disaster response chief, said that even if Pakistan devotes all of its tents to the victims, some of the shelters may not be appropriate for the Himalayan climate of Kashmir.
Shabab Ahmed, owner of the National Tent company, said that most of the tents were usually exported to Gulf countries or to the United Nations for relief work.
"Pakistan tent manufacturing companies are producing around 30,000 tents per day at the moment," Ahmed said.
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