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Actors Sarwat Gilani and Zhalay Sarhadi have called upon the citizens of Karachi to help the victims of the Gul Plaza fire tragedy in any and all ways possible; the fire that swept away hundreds of shops and twenty-eight lives so far.

Yesterday, Gilani took to Instagram to talk about the tragic Gul Plaza fire incident, addressing the unsystematic, intertwined web of wiring in that building.

“Gul Plaza was not just a building. It is decades of hard work, inherited livelihoods, small dreams turned into family legacies,” she wrote in her caption.

The actor requested her viewers to leave the blame game for later and opt for a solution-focused move as a self-reliant Karachi citizen and help business owners to rebuild their lives.

“It was a deeply sorrowful tragedy; people have faced monetary and life losses. Blaming someone, pinpointing someone, these are all conversations for later. Right now, the people, business owners who are facing the losses, need your and my help,” she said in the social media post.

Gilani requested everyone watching the video to mention the names of Gul Plaza businesses operating online to keep these generational businesses from shutting down entirely. Many people, including actor Aamina Sheikh, jotted down a list of such businesses in the comments section.

“People have lost millions and billions of rupees”.

Emphasising the need to come up with solution-based outcomes, the Joyland actor suggested to users two main ways of helping the victims: by either sitting at home and helping them establish and promote their online businesses, or going to the site of the incident and providing food and water to victims’ families, some of whom have not left the site since Saturday.

For readers who might know someone who needs help getting information about their family members still stuck in the fire, can help by forwarding the contact numbers mentioned in the social media post above.

“Gul Plaza wasn’t just a building, but for Karachi’s every wedding, every dowry, every new house, everything, whether it is travel, kids’ toys, crockery, things to decorate your house, all of it used to come from Gul Plaza,” she reminisced.

Sarhadi, also gave the same message to her fans through a social media post on Instagram. Labelled “Let’s rebuild”, her post included a small list of businesses with their contact numbers that could be used to give donations to shopkeepers who made the shopping center which has been a part of our “lives and heritage”.

“We are all grieving for the lives lost in this unfortunate highly preventable tragedy that befell our beloved shopping centre. As we all reminisce our childhood memories we must not forget that the businesses this centre housed need our attention and focus right now!

Let’s do our bit and help get these small businesses get their footing back by supporting their online stores,” she wrote in the caption.

Several other celebrities, including Hira Mani, Momal Sheikh, and Aina Asif, have been sharing resources to help the victims of the sorrowful incident.