PESHAWAR: The business community on Friday opposed the raids by officials of different departments on hotels and food outlets and warned to announce strike if the government did not stop collection of fines from the shopkeepers.

The matter was discussed here in a meeting of representatives of Tajir Ittehad (traders’ alliance) with Anjuman-i-Tajiran provincial president Malik Mehr Ilahi in the chair.

According to a statement, prominent traders, including Khalid Ayub, Ihtesham Haleem, Lala Noor Mohammad and Wazir Khan Mohmand, also spoke on the occasion.

The participants said that during the past about one year the raiding parties of provincial government were imposing huge fines on owners of food outlets which had forced the businessmen to shut their workplaces in a state of compulsion.

“We have always extended support to the government in controlling lawlessness, construction of Bus Rapid Transit, heritage trail project and even in anti-encroachment campaigns in the busy commercial areas of the provincial metropolis,” they said.

The traders in Peshawar, they said, had suffered due to the menace of prolonged terrorism, but the government did not compensate them properly. In addition, the BRT added to their miseries because they had to close their shops due to construction work.

They said that the government should open all the roads in city and cantonment areas as they were facing problems in loading and unloading of goods in different bazaars. “We will soon convene a convention of traders to devise our future strategy,” they said.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2018