GUJRAT: The local fish market has been shifted to Shadiwal Road from the east Circular Road.

The traffic congestion and lack of parking facility in the downtown area has forced traders from across the district to purchase fish from this new market in Gujrat. As winter sets in, business here has accelerated with the auction of huge fish consignments every morning.

Taimoor Butt, whose family has been in the fish business for three generations, told Dawn that the pre-Partition fish market was located in a street adjacent to the main Muslim Bazaar along Circular Road where most of the old fish shops had either been sold due to an unprecedented increase in market value of the properties or the traders had shifted their businesses to carts in the same bazaar.

He added that some of them had moved towards Shadiwal Road where at least a dozen new and spacious shops had been developed in the last couple of years and now it had become the main fish market of the district. Shopkeepers from Lalamusa, Jalalpur Jattan, Kunjah, Mungowal and neighbouring districts purchased from this market.

A local vendor said the fish supply to Gujrat market was mainly from Karachi, Mangla Dam, Qadirabad, Marala and other nearby headworks on the rivers of Chenab and Jhelum as well as local fish farms. He said the fish species available at the market included Rohu, Baam, Chenja, Mushka, Sohl, Malhi and Khaga.

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2019