PESHAWAR: A benumbed district and police administration again watched with dazed eyes as protesters blocked the city’s main artery on Khyber Road thus causing hours of traffic jam and increasing pressure on several roads running through the old part of the provincial capital.

Taxi drivers staged a sit-in in front of Provincial Assembly to protest the alleged inappropriate behaviour of the traffic cops. The employees of population welfare department were protesting against their sacking. Nadra employees demanded service structure, while suspended workers from the Workers Welfare Board were demanding their reinstatement.

But the trophy for staging the sit-in went to Tehreek-i-Insaf’s very own MPA, Fazl-i-Elahi, along with voters from his constituency, PK-6, to protest power loadshedding.

Fazl-i-Elahi is the main guarantor between Peshawar Electricity Supply Company and his constituency, who were allowed to pay bill at a flat rate of Rs600 per month, provided they agreed to install meters in an area where officials say power theft and line losses were phenomenal.

That political expediency rather than safeguarding national interest were at the heart of Monday’s protest by the PTI lawmaker is another matter. What is more interesting is perhaps his sit-in that also contributed to the traffic gridlock. As one onlooker quipped, PTI was getting a taste of their own medicine.

While commuters remained stuck on the Grand Trunk Road that links with Khyber Road that abuts the Provincial Assembly for long hours, inching and crawling towards their destination, the district and police administration was nowhere to be seen.

The little the traffic constables did was to divert all traffic towards Nishtar Hall Road, causing a long tail that stretched as far as Haji Camp a few kilometres away. This also increased pressure on the already congested, encroached-upon roads in the old part of the city.

The sits-in in front of Provincial Assembly in some cases, comprising only a handful of protesters, has become the order of the day in the provincial capital, causing immense problems to commuters travelling between city, Cantonment, University Town and Hayatabad.

The district administration remains reluctant to take action, awaiting a formal policy statement from a seemingly clueless government. Minister for Information and the government’s chief spokesman, Mushtaq Ghani had promised to come up with a policy, this however, going by Monday’s traffic jam, has not happened.

Some government officials did come up with statements with regard to strict enforcement of a policy to disallow gatherings outside the Provincial Assembly but there was no hint of any decision having been taken or implemented.

Published in Dawn February 3rd , 2015

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