PESJHAWAR, Dec 29: As part of their campaign against the deteriorating law and order situation and excessive loadshedding in the province, businessmen of the city observed a hunger strike at Chowk Yadgar on Monday.

On the first day of the two-day hunger strike, the businessmen vowed to continue the series of protest programmes to force the government to ensure protection of lives and properties of people, or step down.

The traders wearing black armbands displayed banners and placards inscribed with slogans against government’s policies. They were raising slogans against lawlessness and what they called negligence of the rulers. “Protect the people or step down” was the slogan they chanted all the time.

Besides leaders of the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry, members of its sister organisations also participated in the protest camp. Speaking to the protesters, SCCI president Sharafat Ali Mubarak said cases of kidnapping for ransom had increased alarmingly and people were feeling insecure.

He warned the government to take immediate and effective steps for overcoming the situation, otherwise businessmen were united and would continue their protest campaign till the fall of the government.

He said that due to the rising crimes people were so scared that they could not continue their business as criminals were freely roaming around with no action against them by officials concerned. The province’s economy, he alleged, was being weakened through a conspiracy and the government was unable to play its role for protection of people.

Referring to the kidnapping of a woman and a trader, the SCCI leader said that in the Frontier province women were held in high esteem, but the recent incident had caused unrest among people.The government, he said, was duty bound to protect lives and properties of people. He said industrialists of Peshawar, Bannu, Kohat and Gadoon would hold a joint meeting to devise their next line of action against the increasing crimes.

Pakistan Muslim League-N’s NWFP president and former provincial chief minister Pir Sabir Shah, who visited the camp, said the increasing crimes, especially kidnapping cases, had paralysed the economy of the province, but the government was unable to overcome the situation.

Through a conspiracy, he claimed, investors were being forced to leave the province.

He said it was failure of law-enforcement agencies, which could not fulfil their duties, and that was why lives and properties of people, including women, were not safe.The government, he said, had failed to evolve a concrete mechanism for controlling the crime rate and loadshedding in the province.

He assured the traders of support of his party and pledged that his party would raise the issues on the floor of the assembly.

Sarhad Goods Transport chairman Mohammad Ashraf Khan Khalil said that due to the increasing crimes transporters were also unable to run their business because militants targeted them if they resisted any snatching attempt of the vehicles.