Clearing the streets: Pushcart owners, traders demonstrate against anti-encroachment campaign

Say they can’t be evicted without being provided an alternative.

PESHAWAR: The pushcart owners associations and traders protested against the district administration’s anti-encroachment drive in the different areas of the city on Monday.

Demonstrators were joined by members of Karwan Tehreek and Peshawar Qaumi Jirga, and other trade organisations. They chanted slogans against the provincial government and marched towards Governor House, blocking traffic and troubling commuters.

The district administration’s anti-encroachment campaign has been going on for several months and they had been ordered to take action against pushcart owners. The authorities have also confiscated hundreds of pushcarts across the city.



Pass Holder Association President Gul Haq said that in 1983 the municipal corporation approved a law that forbade removing pushcart owners until they were provided alternative work.

“All pushcart owners in Faqirabad pay Rs300 per month rent to the administration,” he said while talking outside Peshawar Press Club. “Under the law, back in 1988 when the government was constructing the Chowk Yadgar, pushcart owners were allotted cabins inside Kohati Gate. But the present government is depriving people of their legal source of income.”

Zafar Khattak, a trader, accused authorities of using power against the poor instead of taking action against those who had built buildings on government property.

“It is our right to work anywhere in the city as we pay a regular tax to the government,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10^th, 2013.