RAWALPINDI, Feb 27: After having heated arguments almost daily with the owners of cars parked outside his house in Usmanpura, a locality in Raja Bazaar, Abdul Samad has put a 'no parking' banner in the street. He hopes it will keep the street clear of the shoppers' vehicles.

“People come for shopping in Raja Bazaar but park their vehicles in our streets. It is becoming a constant headache,” he told Dawn .

After not finding space on the main road, people coming for shopping in one of the oldest and busiest markets of the garrison city have started parking vehicles in the nearby residential areas. It is leading to arguments and sometimes brawls with the residents.

Raja Bazaar and its adjoining markets – Moti Bazaar, Bara Market, City Saddar Road, Liaquat Road, Ganjmandi, Trunk Bazaar, Kashmiri Bazaar, Narankari Bazaar, Kalan Bazaar, Urdu Bazaar, Sarafa Bazaar, Bhabara Bazaar and College Road commonly known China Market – have run out of parking space over the last few years.

Sajjad Haider, a resident of Nayya Mohallah, said brawls between the residents and the people visiting Moti Bazaar have become a routine. “People come back after three or four hours of shopping. Parking leaves little space in the streets,” he said.

Mostly shoppers park vehicles in the streets of Nayya Mohallah, in front of the Government Girls High School; Usmanpura, adjacent to Imperial Market; Mohanpura, the area between City Saddar Road and Kashmiri Bazaar; and Chittian Hattian, near Trunk Bazaar, Sarafa Bazaar and Bhabara Bazaar.

The people living in these areas have started resisting shoppers' vehicles outside their homes. Apart from arguing with them, some of them are also coming up with ways to stop the vehicles of shoppers from entering the streets.

In Nayya Mohallah, the people have erected posts to block the entry of cars and allow only vehicles of the residents and their visitors. This has forced the shoppers to use the parking area of the nearby District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital.

Though aware of the problem, the Rawal Town Municipal Administration (RTMA) seems to be doing nothing to resolve it. According to the building rules, all shopping plazas, markets and trading centres must have parking lots. But mostly shopping plazas in the city do not have parking lots.

“It is difficult to find a place to park vehicle in Raja Bazaar,” said Faizan Rasheed, a shopper at City Saddar Road. Ijaz Hasan, who came to Moti Bazaar, dropped his family, telling them he would pick them up after two hours and left the place. “There was no place to park the car.”

He said RTMA failed to clear encroachments from roads and doing nothing to force commercial plazas' owners to have parking lots.

Rawal Town Administrator Talat Mehmood Gondal said the RTMA had launched anti-encroachment drive to clear roads of encroachments in an effort to have more space in main commercial zones.

He hoped that the parking problem would be resolved after the completion of multi-storey parking plaza by Rawalpindi Development Authority. He said there was no space available in Raja Bazaar to allocate for parking purposes.

About implementing building rules in the commercial zones, the administrator said most plazas and markets in Raja Bazaar and adjoining markets were built 50 to 60 years ago. “That is why they did not have space for parking.” —A Reporter