For the 15-year-old, the day is not yet over even at 11.30pm as he rubs his fruit clean and places them on a wooden pushcart with the hope of attracting customers.
Bracing a humid August night of Peshawar, the Afghan lad hardly lets visiting customers go without shopping because one thought is uppermost in his mind: he must sell out the whole lot to avoid financial loss at the end of the day.
For the last three days he could not make enough to make both ends meet.
“On average, I end up earning a profit of Rs80 to Rs100 every day but the last three days were hard. I could not meet even the essential expenditure,” said Izzat Ullah, while negotiating a deal with a motorist who had stopped by to purchase a watermelon.
His earnings shrank to their lowest since the day he lost his rented shop and he was thrown into disarray as a result. His 10-member family suffered together.
Izzat Ullah was forced to carry out his business in the open, placing his pushcart-cum-rack, nicely lit-up with a bulb, right on the edge of the road after the building housing his rented shop was demolished by the city developers to widen the busy Warsak Road.
Under the recently-launched, multi-million-rupee road widening campaign in Peshawar, the provincial government has set sights on broadening several important city roads to accommodate the heavy traffic.
Though the government’s move of undertaking a long overdue campaign in the city has won it kudos, the negative impact of the scheme on the poor strata of society has attracted least attention from the government functionaries, civil society and social work organizations.
People like Izzat Ullah, who got disturbed because of the inappropriate way of carrying out the road widening campaign, are hardly sure about their future.
“We would certainly be looking for some other source of income as we cannot afford to continue making losses for a longer period,” said Jumma Gul, father of Izzat Ullah.
Jummah Gul, in his mid 40s, told this correspondent that they were taken by surprise as on last Friday they were told to vacate the shop. They were given only three hours to do so, according to him.
“Next day — on Saturday — the bulldozer did not take too long to raze the double-storied building to the ground,” said the bearded Jummah with a smiling face.
The operation was carried out in such an ill-planned and unprofessional manner that the busy Warsak Road got inundated at least at one point after the sewage drains running on both sides of the road got choked with the debris of the demolished concrete structures.
Gulab Sher, owner of the double-storied building, complained that the government demolished his family’s building without even letting them know as to how much they would be paid in compensation.
“Rumours are rife that Rs40,000 to Rs50,000 per marla would be paid in compensation,” said Gulab Sher, who serves in the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), NWFP, as naib qasid. He fails to understand as to how the government can take over his land without signing a deal with him.
The District Revenue Officer (DRO) of the Peshawar City district government Khalid Salim Marwat, apparently unaware of the miseries caused to the poor by the road widening project, termed the demolition operation in accordance with the spirit of the Land Acquisition Act, 1894.
He said that section 17 of the Act provides that the land specifically required for the execution of a project might be taken over by the government, on emergency basis, even before making payment or even before determining the price of the land.
“In this case, too, section 17 of the Land Acquisition Act has been invoked after the department concerned asked for the possession of the land on emergency basis,” said Marwat.
Gulab Sher, who has recently refused to pay for his son’s studies due to financial constraints, was earning Rs5,000 through monthly rent from three shops and two small quarters — all now lying in ruins.
“I don’t know when would we receive the money. Nobody from the government side has bothered to tell us,” said a frustrated Gulab Sher, who plans to build small cabins on whatever little area he would be left with after losing land to the road widening project.
Certainly, he would not be able to construct the cabins, he added, if he did not get enough money in compensation against the land taken over by the government.
It may take him another 20 to 30 days to know the exact amount of money he would be paid in compensation as the award for the subject land would take a month or even more than that to be announced.
“We are in the process of determining the price of the land which may take twenty days or more to get announced,” said Marwat.
According to him, the affectees would get 15 per cent over and above the market value — yet to be determined — after the department had asked for the land on emergency basis.
The development planners of the provincial government argued that the government carried out the whole exercise well in conformity with the prevalent laws of the land.