Daily Times

KARACHI: The super stores have become another menace for the people of Karachi who are already facing severe traffic hazards, and this situation would get worse in the month of Ramadan that is only a week ahead.

It has been learnt that Chase Departmental Store and Imtiaz Super Market are the main reason of illegal parking on streets leading to heavy traffic jams on busiest roads of the city, making the commuters’ life difficult.

During the peak hours, traffic jams are witnessed particularly in front of Imtiaz Super Market’s Nazimabad branch, Gulshan-e-Iqbal and Chase Departmental Store’s Khalid Bin Waleed Road branch and KDA, North Nazimabad branch.

An official of Karachi Traffic police on the basis of anonymity told Daily Times, “There are traffic jams due to illegal parking on main roads due to these mega stores. But traffic police is unable to deal with this issue as the only job left to us is to check traffic violations, haphazard
crossings, and stoppage of public transport.”

The Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) is also among the responsibles’ for such traffic jams in the city as the authority is giving permissions to these super stores without ensuring that whether they are offering parking spaces or not. In this regard, queries sent to the director general and chief executive of the authority by this scribe remained unanswered.

A resident of Gulshan e Iqbal area, Zaki Siddiqui, said, “Recently opened bramch of Imtiaz Super Market in our vicinity has made our life miserable because the store does not have car parking, resulting in daily traffic jams and you will see many ambulances stuck in gridlock.”

Another city dweller, Syed Wajahat Hussain, questioned that, “When the owners of such departmental stores can spend billions on their super markets than why they do not build a proper
car parking space for
their customers.”

Following the opening of new branch of Imtiaz Super Market in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, traffic disorder at Gulshan roundabout has become a routine matter as the super store owner did not bother to make a car parking area in the store’s premises. The vehicles are parked half way across the main road up to UBL Sports Complex.

A regular commuter, Omer Javaid said, “It surprises me how these billionaire business giants can be so ignorant to the benefit of the public as they can build big and large super markets of Pakistan but completely ignoring how they are making the lives of other miserable.”

Another important issue was raised by a local resident, Samreena Naz, who said that the heavy generators of Imtiaz Supermarket are affecting the residents of the area badly through heat and gas emissions.

Gulshan-e-Iqbal Section Officer (SO) Nisar Ahmed said, “Traffic police is well aware of its responsibility and in this regard we have started lifting illegally parked vehicles on roadsides in various localities of the city including the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area.”

The police official said on Tuesday that traffic police has lifted 12 vehicles so far and has fined the vehicle owners who are found violating the parking rules.

In view of the month of Ramadan ahead, Ahmed said that the traffic police have been directed to be strongly vigilant on the wrong side parking. This scribe tried many times to contact Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Karachi Traffic Police, Dr Amir Sheikh, in a bid to get official version of traffic controllers of the metropolis but no response was made.