No insurance claim from Bolton market affectees

KARACHI - The major insurance companies have not received any insurance claim or demand from the Bolton market affectees so far as most of the shops and properties, located in the paper and wholesale market jurisdiction were not insured, The Nation learnt on Wednesday.
Even now, the concerned companies have not been approached by the affected traders. Till filing of this report, the owners of affected shops, who suffered losses during violence acts, had not submitted their claims of compensation to insurance companies.
When this correspondent contacted the officials of top insurance companies like EFU General, Adamjee and AIG Insurance, they said none of the traders has made claim on their insurance policy for the compensation of properties that were damaged on 28 December 2009, while, some private companies said they have no exposure towards offering non-life general insurance services. Therefore, they have no client-base in this segment.
Sources said that there were very few shopkeepers who had ownership of their properties in the Bolton market; however, most of the shopkeepers had obtained shops on goodwill (Pagri) by the genuine owners of the shops. There were very small shops and godowns whose value was not more than Rs 2.5 million and raw and goods material of the same worth was stored in the godowns as well. Therefore, the total value of the shop amounted to Rs 5 million.
The value of shops was down due to keeping these shops on goodwill basis, sources said.
On contrary, some hoarding points, which were situated behind the affected market, may have been insured. Such godowns contained raw and furnished items of medicines, plastic-made items, chemicals, cosmetics and used warm clothes etc.
It is astonished to mention here that the said Bolton market was the biggest wholesale market of the country but was operating as parallel market in the undocumented economic environment. They were running their business by those small shops. They got shops on goodwill basis with an objective to evade from the tax net.
Sources said traders are still in sudden and unexpected shock, thus, not able to asses the actual losses and damages suffered during Aushura procession as they have no records of their day-to-day market dealings. They have lost all such manual records owed to fire that erupted the whole market within few minutes but they have estimated initial losses of over Rs40 billion.
Sources said that National Insurance Company Limited, one of the leading insurance companies in the public sector, should announce compensation package for the people who martyred during the unrest of 10th muharram, under Anti-terrorism programme introduced by NCL in 2007 for the victims of terrorist acts and violence.
It must be recalled here that the insurance industry showed meeting insurance claims of more than Rs6.0 billion arising from the riots caused by the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on 27th December, CY07.