PESHAWAR: Instead of going after commercial institutions violating the law by parking vehicles on main roads in the posh University Town, the district administration in the provincial capital has again started an ill-planned crackdown on all reputed organisations having decent parking inside their premises and offering good services to the community, particularly in health and education sectors.
The district administration had in the past made a similar attempt to discourage illegal parking on main roads outside a number of schools in the University Town, but failed to take it to a logical end, apparently due to political pressure as some of the educational institutions were owned by influential people.
At that time, too, the district administration had failed to take action against the commercial institutions and organisations that lacked their own parking lot and their customers would park vehicles on main busy roads.
It used to irk local residents and many other people passing through the University Town as the roads would remain jammed.
According to the residents, they thought the district administration would take action against some of the schools and other commercial organisations for not having dedicated parking for customers by banning all commercial activities in University Town but it failed to implement its own decision in letter and spirit.
The district administration, they said, once again repeated the same futile exercise and started harassing all those engaged in providing commercial services.
“There are many institutions and organisations, including government offices, but some of them had dedicated parking for their customers and never created any problem for the local community. And some of the private health centres are receiving patients from all over the province but they never refused parking facilities to them on their premises,” one resident of the town told The News on condition of anonymity.
He said some people had invested millions of rupees in establishing the state-of-the-art health facilities in the University Town but alleged that unbridled rude staff of the district administration straightaway enter there as if they were involved in illegal activities and warn them of shutting down their services.
“It will be better if the district administration goes after those commercial organisations creating problems for the local community and other people passing through the town by blocking the roads with vehicles of their customers,” he suggested.
In one such incident, the district administration staff had launched a campaign to fix tailoring charges of clothes in Peshawar. It entered the shop of a famous tailor in Peshawar Saddar and allegedly started misbehaving with him.
The owner of the tailoring shop was hypertensive. He got irritated and his blood pressure shot up. He was taken to a hospital where he died of a brain haemorrhage there. The district administration didn’t even bother to visit his family for condolence and apology.
