Daily Times

LAHORE: The members of Tehreek-e-Sirat-e- Mustaqueen Pakistan continued their protest for the fourth consecutive day on Tuesday on The Mall for acceptance of their demands.

A large number of protesters also joined the sit-in venue when their leader reached Faisal Chowk outside the Punjab Assembly. The protesters also demanded the sacking of Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan as well as acceptance of other demands. The charged protesters vowed not to let go of their demands. They said that the protest would continue till all those responsible for the amendment to the clauses regarding Khatm-e-Nabuwwat in Elections Act 2017 had resigned.

The city traffic police also failed to maintain the traffic flow as citizens witnessed massive traffic jam on The Mall and its surrounding important roads due to sit-in and other development activities in the provincial capital.

The people faced immense problems in reaching their destinations and they had to use alternative routes, which were also choked with heavy volume of traffic. People from all walks of life have demanded that provincial government must take notice of the traffic jams that cause severe hardship to common man.

Millions of rupees are burnt into air in the form of smoke on a daily basis in the city as thousands of vehicles struck in traffic jams consume costly fuel while standing on the roads in traffic mess, which seem to be an ever increasing phenomenon on the main arteries of the city.

Traffic on The Mall, Abbot Road, Empress Road, Edgerton Road, McLeod Road, Davis Road, Lakshmi Chowk, Gawalmandi, Jail Road and its linking arteries was completely choked for many hours panicking the citizens. They blamed the traffic police for this mismanagement and termed them “incapable of managing the flow of traffic”.

Fawad and Ali who were struck in the traffic jam told Daily Times that besides time wastage the traffic mess also caused economic loss in terms of costly fuel because the vehicular engines remained started all the time due to crippling traffic flow. Fayaz Ahmed, a senior citizen, said that another major loss was environmental pollutions because thousands of vehicles were staying on the roads without any movement or very slow movement. “This means addition of a lot of smoke, harmful gases and carbon particles into the atmosphere. Who is to blame for that?” he posed a query.

In this situation, ambulances carrying emergency patients were also stuck in the traffic jam while the road users had to face a lot of troubles for hours to move from one place to another. According to Chief Traffic Officer’s spokesperson that city’s traffic was not jammed but its flow was slow due to diversion for sit-in protest on The Mall as well as other ongoing development work in different areas of the city. He said that traffic wardens tried to divert traffic to link roads, but the link roads were also blocked. He added that more traffic wardens had also been deployed at all blocked roads where they would clear the roads soon.

Published in Daily Times, November 29^th 2017.