LAHORE, May 8: District Coordination Officer Mian Muhammad Ijaz has said there will be no compromise on the plan for phasing out of two-stroke rickshaws from the city district by December 2007 with the rickshaw owners mafia.

Talking to journalists here on Monday, the DCO, who is also the ex-officio chairman of the District Regional Transport Authority, said that two-stroke rickshaws had already been banned on the Shahrah-i-Quaid-i-Azam and would be banned on Jail Road from July 1 and the Canal Bank Road from November.

The ban would continue to be extended to other roads with the increase in number of four-stroke rickshaws.

He said the rickshaw owners mafia was opposing the plan because the price of the same had reduced from Rs100,000 to Rs30,000 owing to imposition of ban on manufacturing and registering of new rickshaws.

The mafia, he said, owned over 60 per cent of rickshaws operating in the city district while drivers operated rickshaws on a rental basis.

Out of around 45,000 rickshaws being plied in the provincial metropolis, only 25,000 were registered, he claimed.

The DCO said that not only two-stroke rickshaws would be phased out from the city by December 2007, but all 900 buses would also be converted to the CNG. The plan for conversion of 700 wagons to the CNG was also under consideration.

He said the policy in this regard had been formulated under the directions given by the Supreme Court to provincial governments by taking a suo moto notice of growing atmospheric pollution due to vehicular emission.

The city district government tried to control the noise pollution of two-stroke rickshaws by promoting the use of noise-free silencers. Free silencers were fitted in 400 rickshaws free-of-cost, but the rest of drivers did not change them, he said.