ISLAMABAD: Owing to negligence of the authorities concerned, visitors and stallholders at the H-9 Sunday bazaar are facing lots of problems.

The bazaar was the main attraction for the citizens but after the construction of the metro bus depot and track, the access to the bazaar, according to the stallholders, has been reduced.

The visitors now face the issue of parking as a separate place has been allocated far from the bazaar. As a result, instead of parking their vehicles there, the visitors opt for a random parking creating a traffic mess.

Before the construction of the Peshawar Mor interchange, there were two entrances to the bazaar: one from the H-9 service road and the other from the Kashmir Highway.

Visitors, stallholders complain of lack of parking space and accessibility

The latter was blocked during the construction of the interchange and never restored after the completion of the project.

The H-9 service road entrance remains dilapidated with vehicles passing through loose rubble and debris.

The visitors also face problems in the absence of signboards as the bazaar occupies a large area and is segmented into different sections where different items are sold. Walking through the grid-like arrangement, it is easy to lose your way. This is why signs were put up at each gate, indicating which section was where.

So, for example, those who wanted to shop for clothes would disembark around gates 6 and 7 while those looking for foodstuffs and fresh produce would use gates 1-3 and 11.

Now, however, the signs indicating which section is where have been uprooted and are lying unused. Only one sign, which marks the location of the ‘landa’ section, is still prominently displayed.

“This is nonsense. First, I have to put myself on risk to cross the speedy Kashmir Highway and now I’m looking for the fruit section,” said Amanat Khan, a visitor, who came from G-9. He requested the CDA to install an overhead bridge on the Kashmir Highway.

“We are facing a lot of problems. After the launch of the metro bus project, we started losing our customers as access to the bazaar got limited,” said Malik Asif, a stallholder. He said in the past three public vans used to stop in front of the bazaar but now these routes have been diverted.

“Currently, no direct public van is coming here,” he said, adding the parking lot was also out of the access area. “Initially, when we raised the parking issue the CDA promised to arrange a shuttle service but nothing happened,” he said.

Another stallholder said there was no U-turn on Kashmir Highway in front of the bazaar for visitors coming from G-10 who have to take a U-turn near Zero Point to reach the bazaar.

The chief inspector of the bazaar, Haider Imam, also acknowledged the problems being faced by the visitors and stallholders. However, he said talks with the Metro Bus Authority and the CDA in this regard were underway.

“We are trying to resolve all these issues as soon as possible,” he said, adding despite the issues around 40,000 to 50,000 people visited the bazaar every Sunday.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2016