The traders’ community is up in arms. Reason: a recent move by the city administration to demolish around 7,000 shops on Circular Road, a major business hub in the provincial metropolis, as part of the Punjab government’s anti-encroachment drive.

Reportedly, the Lahore Authority for Heritage Revival, a recently formed body meant to rehabilitate and preserve heritage sites in the city, has been tasked to do the needful. The traders of Circular Road and adjacent commercial zones, which are home to many old marketplaces, have rejected the move, saying that the project will affect business worth Rs 5 trillion. They have been holding protest demonstrations and press conferences in which they have urged the government to adopt a more pragmatic approach and not consider the use of force, as that could lead to disastrous consequences for the national economy.

At a recent protest rally, the traders carried placards that said that the demolition of 7,000 shops meant the financial murder of 7,000 families. The traders also called out the city administration for not taking stakeholders on board and warned of escalating their protest.

At the press conference at Lahore Press Club, Adil Munir, the president of Circular Road Markets Board, said, “We have been doing business [on Circular Road] for generations. The government has callously launched the project, without considering the toll on our bread and butter. We were kept in the dark. We came to know about the drive only through the media.

“We aren’t opposed to heritage revival. But it shouldn’t cost us our livelihood. That is totally unacceptable,” says Adil Munir, the president of Circular Road Markets Board.

“We aren’t opposed to heritage revival. But it shouldn’t cost us our livelihood. That is totally unacceptable,” he added.

Visibly agitated, Amjad Ali, who claimed to be a shopkeeper, said the administration “is bent upon destroying our business. We’ve received notices asking us to move businesses within three months, or we’ll be thrown out.

“The wholesale business on Circular Road caters to the entire country. Disrupting it would mean disrupting the supply chain.”

Ali rejects the allegations of illegal occupation and encroachments on Circular Road. “We are tenants on government land who have been doing business for decades,” he says. He says that the government ought to form a commission on the issue and allow full representation to the traders’ community so that they can give their input.

Expressing solidarity with the Circular Road traders, Mujahid Maqsood Butt, the president of Anjuman-i-Tajiran, says the business community as well as the traders need to forge unity among their ranks in order to foil such attempts by the bureaucracy in the future. “We have to raise a strong voice to stop what’s planned on Circular Road. If we fail today, other markets will face the same fate tomorrow,” he says.

TNS tried to get a government official to comment on the issue, but wasn’t successful.

Ahsan Zia is a print and broadcast journalist