April 16, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 9, 1429

HYDERABAD, April 15: A large number of CNG-rickshaw owners and drivers staged a demonstration outside the press club on Tuesday, accusing the rickshaw manufacturing company and the National Bank of Pakistan through which they received the vehicles of supplying them with “useless machines that remained off the roads 15 days a month”.

Talking to journalists, the protesters’ leaders Ashiq Jamali and Dil Murad said that the rickshaws they had booked and purchased through the National Bank of Pakistan under the President’s Employment Scheme were a piece of scrap for which the poor and jobless people had deposited tens of millions of rupees with the bank as advance payment.

The machines remained off the roads for 15 days a month and the unemployed, to the serious disadvantage of the poor people who had paid Rs200,000 per rickshaw to feed their families. They said that they could no more pay instalments.

They said that even spare parts of the faulty rickshaws were not available in the market. They had been running from pillar to post and to get justice but no one was prepared to listen to them, they complained.

They demanded that the bank should return them advance payment without delay and regretted that could not even move the court because they had no money to pursue their case.

They warned that if the authorities concerned did not hold talks with them over their grievances within a week they would abandon their rickshaws outside the bank branches in Hyderabad.

Victimisation alleged: A trader leader has accused the leaders of Thatta chapter of the Pakistan People’s Party of subjecting him to political victimisation and warned if he did not get justice, his colleagues would observe a shutter-down strike in his hometown Mirpur Bathoro taluka.

Haji Habibullah Memon, president of Bathoro Traders Association said at a news conference at the press club on Tuesday that he had been chief polling agent for the Shirazi group, which was affiliated with Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid. After elections PPP leaders Ismail Soho, Dr Shams Shoro, Altaf Shoro and Asghar Soho pressurised him to change loyalty and join the PPP, he alleged.

He said that he was threatened with dire consequences and false cases when he refused. Some armed miscreants removed flags and posters of Shirazi group from his shop on April 13 at 11.15 pm and abused his nephew Ghulam Mustafa Memon, he said.

Mr Memon said that he went to the police station to register an FIR as soon as he heard of the news but police refused to register his complaint arguing that removal of flags and posters was not a crime.

He said that when he was returning home from the police station the same armed miscreants deprived him of Rs9,500 cash and a licensed repeater.