VEHARI, Dec 17: Commuters faced hardships on Sunday as there was no public transport on road because the district administration had impounded buses to bring the people to a public meeting to be addressed by President Gen Pervez Musharraf in Khanewal today (Monday).

Dawn correspondent saw many people, including women and children, travelling in trucks and other vehicles meant for goods transportation. The impounded vehicles were parked at the Police Lines and many of those impounded vehicles were sent to Jahanian to bring people. A bus driver said police had impounded the vehicles forcibly as the transporters had refused to give their vehicles voluntarily to the district administration.

Many transporters parked their vehicles at ‘safe’ places to avert their seizure. Sources said that the district administration had asked the traffic police to arrange 400 vehicles to transport peoples to the meeting in Khanewal. However, traffic police official Muhammad Saleem claimed that police had ‘hired’ a few vehicles and their owners would be paid accordingly. When asked why transporters were not plying their buses, he claimed that a majority of the drivers feared that their buses would be seized but police were not impounding the vehicles forcibly.

According to our Multan, public transport shrotage was also reported in Multan, Khanewal and some nearby towns.

Sources said police from several districts had been brought to Khanewal for security duty.