Pop-up shops, textile firms move into Pakistan’s frenzied mask market

KARACHI: As the COVID-19 pandemic has spread across Pakistan, a chaotic market has sprung up for face masks.
In the early days, frontline medical staff and the public clamored for masks and other personal protective equipment, as production companies in Pakistan and around the world struggled with a host of obstacles, from illness to freight costs, from hoarding to a supply squeeze on filter fabric.
In Pakistan, which has recorded more than 270,000 infections so far, the shortage of masks was so acute in March and April that health workers took to social media to appeal for help and citizens hoarded supplies, pushing prices by up to 2,000 percent.
But these problems are a thing of the past as hundreds of new mask brokers and businesses have emerged around the country.
“I lost my job after the coronavirus pandemic triggered lockdowns and all businesses were shut down, but now I am happy because I have found a better alternative,” said Owais Ahmed, a manager at a garment factory who has been selling masks at a stall in Karachi’s Bolton Market for the past two months.
Every day, Ahmed said, he sells up to 20 boxes of masks (an average box has 50 masks), with each box costing up to 600 rupees ($3.5). The hot commodity in the mask trade, the N95 device, which is sturdier than surgical masks and has a better filter, sells for 300 rupees a piece.
Abdul Samad Memon, the senior vice chairman of the Pakistan Chemist and Druggists Association, said a box of surgical masks imported from China for up to 100 rupees sold for as much as 2,300 rupees in March.
But raids by the authorities pushed prices slowly down, and more production units had been set up as major textile firms switched their assembly lines to mask manufacturing.
Ijaz Khokhar, the chief coordinator for the Pakistan Readymade Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said many textile units operating in Faisalabad, Lahore and Karachi had switched entirely to producing masks for both local supply and export. On average, he said, 500,000 to 600,000 masks were being produced a day at textile factories in Faisalabad city alone.
In early March, the World Health Organization estimated that 89 million medical masks were required for the COVID-19 response each month, which required a 40 percent increase in manufacturing globally.
Medical suppliers and health care industry officials complain the frenzy to produce masks has broken down standard quality controls, opening the market to an influx of masks of uncertain effectiveness.
Manufacturers claim they have met all quality standards for masks for export, especially to the United States and the United Kingdom, and were working hard to bridge “quality deficiencies” in masks supplied to local buyers.
As virus infections have steadily declined around the world, vendors have begun to fear for the prospects of their new businesses.
“I think the mask business will continue for the whole year,” said Shahzad Ahmed Siddiqui, who switched to selling masks when his readymade garments business closed due to coronavirus lockdowns.
But Owais Ahmed feared the mask business would soon decline.
“The business will continue up to Eid Al-Adha,” he said as he arranged masks at his store. “Maximum business will go on for 15 to 20 days, not beyond that.”