PESHAWAR, June 9: The City district government has failed to remove encroachments from the busy markets in the areas of the Kabuli and Hashtnagri police stations.
The smugglers-turned-shopkeepers, who sell spurious spices, tea and ghee, have started encroaching upon footpaths in front of their shops and godowns on the Chowk Yadgar, Pipal Mandi, Ashraf and Yousuf Ali Shah Roads.
Since the elections of the district and four town nazims, shopkeepers have been occupying portions of narrow roads in the old city areas as a result of which it has become extremely difficult for pedestrians to walk through these places. They face the same difficulty in the flour and grain market of the New Rampura Gate, which has become a dumping ground for ghee and cooking-oil consignments waiting to be exported to Afghanistan.
Some so-called exporters, who get waived all sorts of taxes, including sales tax, on the export of various brands of ghee and cooking oil to Afghanistan, do not really export their ghee consignments to Afghanistan as mentioned in the documents. They get their consignments unloaded in the Khyber and Mohmand agencies from where they re-smuggle them in Bara-bound buses and wagons back to grain markets of Peshawar.
A shopkeeper said that the Custom department has never bothered to confirm with their counterparts in Kabul about the consignments destined for Afghanistan.
Another shopkeeper said daily 50 tons of ghee and cooking oil which have been transported for Afghan markets are re-routed and smuggled back to Peshawar because waived sales tax is the main earning for mill-owners and their family members-turned-exporters.
The previous government had put a ban on the entry of all kinds of heavy vehicles during the day time in the flour market, but nowadays the traffic police itself escorts 22-wheelers inside the market after 9am every day.
The traders and bankers on Yousuf Ali Shah Road park their cars on footpaths. They do park small-size trucks and pick-ups in front of their shops which causes traffic jams for hours on end.
The traders also allow donkey-cart owners to park outside their shops so that they can facilitate their clients who come daily from nearby villages for buying food items. “Police on mobiles and motorcycles do nothing except monitoring the re-smuggling of ghee and oil in the market. They are seen roaming around godowns where ghee canisters are unloaded,” said a shopkeeper.
Dry-fruit merchants, who are housed in the Town-1 shops on Ashraf Road, have occupied the footpaths. They put their items on display in front of their shops on footpaths. Neither the police nor the municipality employees concerned dare to remove their sacks and baskets from the footpaths because they are supporters of the Nazim of Town-1 or workers of different political parties.