LAHORE, Oct 17: Hundreds of schoolchildren remained stranded for up to five hours on Monday either outside their institutions or in vehicles, knowing not that those supposed to pick them were stuck up in one of the worst gridlocks city suffered in months.

Shadman, Shah Jamal, Muslim Town and Jail Road were among the worst-hit area, owing primarily to mismanagement on the part of city traffic police.

Sources said the Muslim Town flyover project was not in sight some three months ago when the Islami Jamiat Tulaba (IJT)had announced its ‘Umeed-i-Pakistan Million March’ from the New Campus to Ichhra.

According to the plan, the ‘March’ participants were to use Canal Bank and Ferozepur roads.

The sources said the provincial administration on Oct 12 granted a formal permission to the organisers to go ahead with their march as scheduled, though the Ferozepur and Canal Bank roads had been partly closed for executing the flyover project.

The IJT activists began their march at around 2.30pm from the New Campus but the city traffic police blocked Ferozepur Road near Shamaa Chowk at around 11am by putting big containers there while barricades were also erected near Muslim Town Mor, without providing motorists any alternative route.

Within half an hour, traffic congestions started occurring at Lytton Road, from Mozang Chungi to Shamaa Chowk and up to Siddique Trade Centre on Jail Road, Canal Bank Road, Wahdat Road and Shamaa Road, besides thoroughfares along LOS Drain and on the streets of Shah Jamal, Shadman, Ichhra and New Mozang.

The traffic mess was so intense that the Rescue 1122 vehicles could not reach the pedestrian bridge near Kinnaird College where a boy had committed suicide after killing a girl.

The traffic wardens, who were supposed to provide relief to the commuters, were found either missing or busy chatting on their cell phones at a ‘safe distance’ from the whole mess.

Chief Traffic Officer Capt (Retired) Ahmad Mobeen told newsmen in the evening that the gridlock was caused because the IJT activists decided to hold a meeting on the Ferozepur Road at the end of their march.

The situation, however, became worrisome for students of various educational institutions when their rickshaws, vans or vehicles driven by their parents were not there to pick them at the closing time, 1:30pm. Unaware of the traffic mess in which their drivers or elders were trapped into, the students kept waiting for them anxiously.

A number of students, especially of primary classes, were seen playing in the grounds of their institutions or adjoining areas while several others preferred to sit on the roads or footpath and wait. Some residents of houses in the adjoining localities were generous enough to offer potable water to these stranded students, some of whom quenched their thirst from the taps at nearby mosques.

Attendance at the private coaching institutions in the localities remained thin as the mess-up started clearing after 6pm.