QUETTA, Aug 30: National highways linking Quetta and other parts of the country were blocked by transporters who parked a large number of buses and coaches on the Bolan Pass and Lakh Pass as their strike entered its third consecutive day on Monday.

Private transport owners, who stopped plying their vehicles against the shifting of a bus stand from the city, announced that their 'wheel jam' strike would continue till the acceptance of their demands.

"We will not call off our wheel jam strike until our demands are accepted," Mir Hikmat Jan Lehri, one of the transporters said. Efforts to restore traffic on highways remained fruitless as transporters could not be convinced by the local administration and other officials concerned to call off their strike.

Reports from other areas of the province suggested that hundreds of buses, coaches and mini buses were stranded at various points along the Quetta-Karachi and Quetta-Sukkur national highways.

Transporters are calling upon the Quetta Development Authority to revoke its decision about the shifting of the Satellite Town bus stand to Hazarganji area. They said that the new bus stand site was without necessary facilities for the people and transporters and it was too far away (18 kilometres) from the city.

The leader of the bus owners' action committee, Mir Hikmat Lehri, urged the government to allow transporters to establish private bus terminals near Quetta as had been allowed by other provincial governments.

He said that the government should re-open the Satellite Town bus stand. The Quetta City District Government Nazim Mohammad Rahim Kakar denied the transporters' claims about the lack of facilities at the new bus stand site and said that the Quetta Development Authority had provided adequate facilities there.

He insisted that the Satellite Town bus stand would not be re-opened and transporters would have to operate from Hazarganji area. The people in Quetta and other parts of the province are facing great difficulties because of the transporters' strike as no passenger vehicle was able to leave the city.

Similarly, no passenger bus or coach could reach Quetta from anywhere in the province or other parts of the country. Heavy rush was witnessed at the railway booking offices in Quetta and elsewhere in the province and the people faced difficulty in finding seats on all trains bound for Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi and Peshawar.