LAHORE – The closure of car plants by major assemblers will render hundreds of thousands of skilled workforce jobless, as Pak Suzuki and Indus Motor Companies are considering to shut down their factories in view of constant decline in demand for their vehicles.The auto parts manufacturers demanded the government to intervene and ask the local car assemblers to resume their productions. The association, showing grave concern over shutting down of main car manufacturing plants, observed that production of auto parts has also come to a massive slowdown as a result of the flawed policies of the government, resulting in lay off in its workforce, which is currently exceeding 2 million skilled as well as unskilled workers, employed directly and indirectly by this vendor industry.Business Forum of Punjab and PAAPAM chairman Syed Nabeel Hashmi stated that this grim situation arisen has come to pass, because federal government has failed to pay heed to all the warnings about controlling the import of used cars. In addition to this flawed policy on used cars, government has clamped down on sale of CNG cars by car assemblers. Further more, without ensuring availability of Euro-II compliance diesel, government has legislated that Euro-II vehicles be launched from 1st July 2012, thereby increasing the prices of petrol driven vehicles.The chairman further complained that the industry is already reeling under the huge burden of loadshedding, high interest rates and it is extremely unfair that the government is giving preference to imported used junk instead of promoting and supporting local employment generation.The Vice Chairman Munir Bana appealed to the government that it should take immediate remedial actions by banning import of used vehicles (or at least bring the age limit down from 5 to 3 years) in order to bring stability to the auto industrial sector and save the employment of thousand of workers, employed by the vendor industry, who may come on the roads and create law & order situation for the government. We cannot sustain reduced productions for long and would have to lay off thousand of workers before Eid if situation does not improve, he added.