RAWALPINDI: The markets and bazaars of twin cities may face shortage of edibles after confiscation of containers carrying food items.

The impounded containers have been placed along roads of Rawalpindi and Islamabad ahead of Azadi March.

Local goods transporters and traders associations said the confiscation of containers would create shortage of edibles in the coming days.

For the last many years, the law enforcement agencies has been using containers to block marches of lawyers, Tahirul Qadri or combined march of Imran-Qadri as well as Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan.

In the twin cities, the edibles including fruits, vegetables, grains and other items brought from other cities of the country. There are no farms at the local level and mostly products come from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa so in case of road closure, the twin cities will face problems.

As the main transit city, all the goods transported to Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Giligit-Baltistan from Rawalpindi.

On the other hand, Goods Transport Union President Shakeel Qureshi said the government had seized the containers which had created problems for the people. He said the daily wagers were unemployed for the last one week.

He said the government had snatched employment from the daily wagers and they had to find difficulty in feeding their children. He said the goods operators had no option but to stage protest against the government for impounding the containers.

“During protests, goods in the containers destroyed and the goods operators had to pay the bill to the traders,” he said and added that the police and government did not pay anything against the damages.

Traders’ association representative Raja Saleem said the containers were used to transport goods for traders not to use the road closure.

He said if government wanted to close the roads through containers then it should buy its own containers like Sindh government procured in Sindh.

He said that the district administration would assure to provide daily rent of the container otherwise, they would launch protest. However, he said that the perishable items would be destroyed in coming days including medicines.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2019