LAHORE, Nov 16: Model Town will have no Sunday Bazaar from next week as the government has decided shifting the R Block makeshift market to Faisal Town after brains of the metropolitan administration came to a conclusion that Model Town residents are too ‘wealthy’ to have eatables at cheaper rates.

The ‘Shifting’ of the venue sparked protest by vendors outside the Sunday Bazaar in R Block and they blocked the service road for sometime by setting tyres ablaze.

The vendors and the Model Town Residents Association (MTRA) were of the view that the move was aimed at facilitating a superstore of a multinational company in the area.

DCO Sajjad Ahmed Bhutta, however, does not consider it an issue, saying that the Sunday bazaar had not been closed down rather shifted to a more appropriate location.

Talking to Dawn, he dispelled the impression that the decision had anything to do with the superstore.

Bhutta maintained that the rationale of the decision was Model Town did not need a Sunday Bazaar as “it is not the place where the poor reside.” Besides, he added, some land of the venue was owned by the Model Town Society.

When his attention was drawn to the poor population of R and Q Block flats and adjacent Kot Lakhpat localities, the DCO said Kotha Pind locality of Faisal Town had more deserving people needing the facility.

He said the vendors could shift to the new venue as well. “On this venue (Model Town’s R Block) the government would develop a public park within a period of three months,” he concluded.