PESHAWAR: Each police station in the province has been asked to impound at least 200 public transport vehicles for transportation of the election staff and material for the local government elections to be held on May 30, a senior official said.

“We are not impounding the vehicles on our own, but the high-ups have directed us to do so for the national duty,” an official of traffic police said and added that each police station had got a target of 200 vehicles of different types for the purpose.

The official said that a meeting was held at the office of deputy commissioner, Peshawar, on Thursday to negotiate the payment, but most of the transporters’ representatives avoided to participate. He said that Rs5,000 a day would be paid to the owner of each vehicle.

The process of impounding vehicles also caused problems for the passengers as most of the transporters opted to keep their vehicles off the road. The transporters have criticised the district administration and police for impounding the passenger vehicles without assurance of proper payment to them.

The transporters said on the condition of anonymity that the election commission had paid huge funds for the transportation, but the local administration officials were not paying them the actual amount.

However, a representative of the owners of wagon service, Noor Mohammad, said that he had agreed to provide 200 wagons willingly on payment of Rs500 a day for the election duty. He said that an agreement was far better than forceful impounding of vehicles.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2015

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