Following photo appeared in the daily Dawn of May 18, 2008. It sohws a small business stall in Rahimyar Khan, Pakistan. What caught my attention to this photo is the sheer diversity of business being caried out from this small stall. The Urdu words written on the stall advertise for ‘desi’ Eggs, a public telephone call office and EZ load Cellular phone SIMs. All of these products and services are available here. And as if this was not diverse enough, the stall is also selling smuggled Iranian petrol at a rate much cheaper than Pakistan State oil’s prices. Note funnels and bottles full of cheap Iranian petrol on top of the stall.
ATP’s Related Post on Business Diversity: Technology and Health Go Together
Great pick Owais. This is good stuff for my blog too :)
@ Funny ??
its funny because it looks like in Nigeria, where every week
there is an exyplosion because of illegal and dangerous
open air space for petrol, it might be funny in the way that
all jehalats have the same colour.
I actually find this very funny. Thanks.
Diversity or Dangerous city? Ticking bombs. Sorry
A disaster waiting to happen! A deadly combination.
Seems from the picture it’s on the street, where kids and women with flowing robes and burkas pass by. I have no problem with the SIM cards and PCO, or even the farm eggs. The problem is the volatile and flammable gasoline open to the air and stored in thin plastic bottles.
The combination is also dangerous. Incidents have been reported that cell phones have inexplicably caused fires at gas stations in various parts of the world. It prompted phone companies to get experts write statements in support of cell phone safety, such as on this link:
http://www.exponent.com/about/docs/cellphonereport .pdf
But if a petrol spill happens while a phone customer wants a SIM card, or batteries, installed these vendors could cause a lot of trouble.
This is not to take away from the overall creativity of our small business enterpreneurs who can sell eggs, gas and phones at the same time :)