KARACHI, Feb 26: The Jamshed Town administration began an anti-encroachment campaign on Monday. The staff impounded 275 vehicles from dozens of showrooms located on New M.A. Jinnah Road, Khalid Bin Waleed Road and Shahrah-i-Quaideen. The operation to impound vehicles, illegally parked in the lanes and on the main road was launched at about 4pm and continued till late evening.

Jamshed Town Naib Nazim Ziauddin Jamal told DAWN that the operation was launched after the showroom owners failed to comply with the town administration’s directives regarding the ban on vehicle parking in streets. He said 275 vehicles were impounded.

He said that the showroom owners were only allowed to park their vehicles in one row outside their showrooms facing the main roads but they were violating it consistently and used to park vehicles in three to four rows causing traffic jams.

He said residents were severely inconvenienced as they found no place in their streets to park their own vehicles. Similarly traffic using the roads faced bottlenecks.

Mr Jamal said that the impounded vehicles were parked in two playgrounds and the vehicles would only be released after payment of fine and an undertaking by their respective owners not to park their vehicles outside the showrooms. He said City Nazim Mustafa Kamal had also tried to reason with the association of showroom owners to resolve the issue but received no positive response.

About four months ago, over one hundred vehicles were lifted and impounded in a similar fashion by the Jamshed town administration.