RAWALPINDI: The Rawalpindi Municipal Corporation (RMC) will start a grand anti-encroachment drive on Tuesday in order to ease the traffic congestion in city areas.

Rawalpindi Mayor Sardar Naseem told Dawn the RMC had devised a comprehensive plan to remove encroachments in and around Raja Bazaar from Tuesday onwards and that a final warning was issued Monday to all stallholders and shopkeepers to remove their encroachments voluntarily.

He said the operation will be conducted in Raja Bazaar, Jamia Masjid Road, Iqbal Road, City Saddar Road, Kashmiri Bazaar, Ganjmandi, Liaquat Road and College Road by the chief municipal officer, other municipal officers and local police and traffic police teams.

“We will issue fines worth Rs2,000 on violators and if they return, they will be sent to jail for 72 hours,” the mayor said.

Violators will be fined, jailed if they don’t remove encroachments voluntarily, says mayor

He said the RMC had held meetings with traders’ associations in all bazaars and had decided to take action if the shopkeepers, stallholders and cart pushers did not stop encroaching on roads in the bazaars.

He said the severe traffic congestion on the main roads of Raja Bazaar and the adjoining markets in city areas is due to encroachments on footpaths and road sides, lack of parking space and poor traffic management.

The city traffic officer has been asked to make a plan to stop public transport vehicles from being parked in the main bazaars, he said, adding that deploying more traffic personnel will also help the traffic situation.

“We decided to allow people to park cars in the RMC’s basement in the afternoon which will facilitate people visiting China Market on College Road and other nearby markets,” he said.

The mayor added that a vacant plot in Raja Bazaar, where the old RMC offices were, will also be used as car parking and that a rotary car lift parking system will be introduced for which 10 vehicles on which cars will be parked will be brought in.

The fee for parking a car on one of these vehicles will be the same as what the Rawalpindi Development Authority is charging in the parking plaza in Raja Bazaar.

Traders have been asked to park their cars in the parking plazas and not on the road sides, he said and that loading vehicles will also be parked on Railway Road, near the slaughter house.

Shopkeepers and customers who buy furniture and heavy machinery can call them but they will not be allowed to park in the main bazaars.

Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2017