March, 29 2005	Tuesday	18 Safar 1426

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PESHAWAR, March 28: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and the Pakistan Oppressed Nations’ Movement (Ponam) have contacted representative bodies of traders and goods transporters and asked them to take part in strikes called by the alliances. The Sarhad Transport Workers’ Confederation has linked its participation in the MMA’s strike with the acceptance of its demands by the federal government and the trader community will take a decision in a meeting of the NWFP Tajir Ittehad.

“We will decide about taking part in the MMA and Ponam’s strikes in a couple of days,” said NWFP Tajir Ittehad General Secretary Sharafat Ali Mubarak.

Mr Mubarak said the MMA and Ponam had contacted the ittehad a few days back and urged traders to keep their businesses and shops closed in support of their strikes.

Ponam will observe a wheel-jam strike on March 31 against the federal government’s intended move of executing the Kalabagh dam project and ‘military operations in Balochistan and South Waziristan Agency’.

The MMA will observe a strike on April 2 in protest against increase in the prices of essential commodities, particularly petroleum products.

The Information Secretary of the NWFP chapter of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, Maulana Jalil Jan, and provincial MMA spokesman Mufti Kifayatullah, when contacted, said traders’ representatives had given them assurance that they would take part in the alliance’s strike.

However, Mr Mubarak said: “We have not given them an assurance.”

He said that in their meeting at The JUI’s office at Nishtrabad, businessmen told the MMA leaders that the alliance should have taken them into confidence before deciding the date of the strike, which did not suit the traders.

“Traders and businessmen have to make payments to their staff and clients at the start of every month,” he said.

He said that a meeting of the ittehad, to be presided over by its Chairman Haji Ghufran, would be held shortly to take a decision in this regard.

The ittehad, he said, had adopted the same stand regarding Ponam’s strike, for which Pukhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party leader Bashir Matta had contacted the traders.

Traders said the strikes would have a negative affect on business activities in the province as a strike by goods transporters over the past there days had already caused major losses.

“Transportation of goods to Peshawar and Afghanistan from other areas of the country remained suspended from March 24 and several businesses were affected seriously,” said customs clearance agent Ziaul Haq Sarhadi.

He said the strike particularly affected exporters of fruits and vegetables to Afghanistan.

Sarhad Transport Workers’ Confederation General Secretary Sher Ali Khan said his organization would not take part in Ponam’s strike.

However, he said, a decision about taking party in the MMA’s strike depended on the acceptance of the confederation’s demands by the federal government.

He said Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed had assured the confederation’s leaders that their meeting with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz would be arranged, so that they could present their demands.

“If the meeting is not held before April 2 and our demands are not heard, we will be left with no option but to take part in the strike,” he said.

Traffic on the inter-district routes throughout the province remained thin on Sunday because of the truckers’ strike.

The three-day strike had been called by the All Pakistan Goods Transport Association to protest against the rising prices of petroleum products.

The organization’s president Khwaja Mohammad Khan Mohmand said a successful strike was observed as no trucks plied and no goods were transported to any part of the province.

Public transport owners also kept their vehicles off the roads to show solidarity with the goods transporters and commuters in parts of the province faced problems.

Our correspondent in Nowshera adds: Goods transport owners and drivers blocked the GT Road at various places and smashed windscreens of a number of vehicles on Sunday. The protesters also clashed with police in different areas.