KOHAT: More and more women are opening home-based boutiques for ready to choose garments and they are getting popular because of exorbitant rates of sewing suits for Eid by tailors in local bazaars.

Such boutiques make good business round the year, especially ahead of Eid and on account of shopping for weddings. Anwar, husband of owner of a boutique opened in mohallah Mian Badshah, said that good response from customers had resulted in competition where suits were also available on instalments which attracted more buyers.

The women are not ready to buy an unstitched suit for over Rs2,000 from bazaar and then pay for its sewing. They now prefer to buy a readymade suit from a local boutique in the range of Rs1,500 and Rs2,000.

Meanwhile, the tailors had increased the rates of sewing suits for Eid putting extra burden on the people. Most of them attributed it to the power outages, saying they had to hire generators and extra employees to meet the deadline before Eid.

One Shakeel said that due to high commercial rates of gas they had to use petrol and diesel to run generators which also cost them more. They are charging Rs500 to Rs700 per suit, saying that shop rent and their daily expenses had increased significantly due to general price hike.

In some parts of Kohat the administration has fixed rates for sewing of suits. The rate of simple sewing of suit for men has been fixed at Rs450, for double sewing Rs500, for children (simple) Rs350 and double Rs400, but implementation of the rates remains a problem.

TWO GET LIFE TERM: District and sessions judge awarded life imprisonment to a drug smuggler woman and a man on Wednesday.

A year ago, city police SHO Fayyaz Khan had arrested one Inamullah Khan of Tank and Ms Sonia of Bannu near railway crossing here while carrying 14 kilogrammes of hashish on motorcycle.

The district and sessions judge after hearing arguments of the counsels penalised both the smugglers to life imprisonment and Rs100,000 fine each.

‘RANG DE KOHAT’: The paintings work on seven-kilometre road from the DC Office to bypass was completed under the ‘Rang de Kohat’ project on Wednesday.

It was initiated a month ago where artists painted different contours on walls on both sides.

At a function, deputy commissioner Khalid Ilyas said that the project was the longest in terms of kilometers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Meanwhile, the local administration and business community agreed on a joint plan to manage bazaars in view of great rush of customers during last 10 days of Ramazan ahead of Eid.

The traders were told on Wednesday that entry of vehicles into bazaars and construction of temporary shops on the newly-constructed drain would be banned till Eid.

DSP city Raza Mohammad Khan presided over the meeting. He appealed to the traders to cooperate with the administration in implementation of the security and safety plan for Eid shopping in the bazaars.

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2018