HYDERABAD, Sept 26: A large number of fishermen, including women and children, staged a demonstration on Wednesday outside the Hyderabad Press Club urging the chief minister to transfer the DPO of Badin for his alleged leniency towards a former contractor and powerful landlords who they accused had dismantled their hutments along Nareri lake in Badin and destroyed their fishing tools.

The central chairman of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), Syed Mohammad Ali Shah, who organised the protest, said that a powerful former contractor and influential landlords had started ejecting fishermen from Nareri lake area by burning down their hutments and destroying their tools worth tens of thousands of rupees since Sept 11.

The victimised fishermen raised hue and cry in demonstrations across the district but police refused to take any action against the former contractor and his henchmen, he said.

Police finally lodged two FIRs at Golarchi police station after PFF intervened and also arrested some accused but stopped short of taking further action against them allegedly on the directives of DPO of Badin, he said.

He complained that the district’s fisheries department had been criminally silent on the whole issue and appealed to the president and chief minister to order action against the former contractor and the landlords and demanded compensation to the victims for losses.

He urged the chief minister to issue a covering notification declaring in explicit terms that the contract system had been abolished, and order immediate transfer of the DPO of Badin.

Mr Shah took credit for President Gen Musharraf’s action to get back coastal belt of Badin from the Rangers and declare it as a free zone and said that in April this year, Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim had abolished the contract system replacing it with licensing system for catching fish in freshwater lakes of the province.

DEMO: A large number of Mazda and Suzuki drivers staged a demonstration while onboard their vehicles outside the press club on Wednesday in protest against alleged highhandedness of police.

The drivers’ leaders, Hidayatullah Bughio, Ali Bhai and Shakeel said that they were harassed by police and challaned if they did not pay Bhatta (extortion money) to police despite the fact they were in possession of all the legal documents.

They said that police, thus, took away a large chunk from their earnings and demanded protection against their excesses. They warned that they would stage a series of protest demonstrations across the province if police did not change their behaviour