ISLAMABAD: Angry traders burnt tires and blocked roads in the city on Tuesday. They denounced the “bias that police had shown against them” and demanded immediate release of their arrested companions. Dozens of traders in F-8 Markaz blocked the double road in front of the district courts, hampering traffic flow. They also demanded a change in the prevalent tenancy laws.
On October 1, Shalimar Police arrested 12 traders, including their leader Mian Muhammad Maqbool, because Colonel (Retired) Abdur Rehman Khan had lodged a complaint against them. According to Khan, the traders had been running a real estate business at his flat in Margalla View flats of sector F-10. The tenants were not paying rent and were in violation of the contractual agreement.
A court, after receiving Khan’s complaint, decided the case in his favour and sent a bailiff to get the flat vacated. While the court official managed to get the flat emptied, he complained that the accused traders had “manhandled” him.
Speaking to the traders, the president of the F-8 Markaz Traders’ union, Qammar Abbassi, said the police were “deliberately putting the traders’ leaders behind bars on personal grudges”.
“The courts always decide against the poor shopkeepers and police find an excuse to put them in jail,” he said, adding, “Until the laws of tenancy are amended, this practice will continue.”
Other leaders threatened of a city-wide protest if the authorities “did not stop arresting their colleagues”.
“We will not allow the authorities to carry on with this highhandedness,” one of them shouted.
A similar protest was also staged in the Markaz Market of sector G-10, where traders blocked roads and observed a partial strike. They dispersed peacefully about an hour later.
However, traders from the F-10 Markaz, where Mian Maqbool- the main accused - operates his shop did not respond to the call for strike. Shops in the market were open all day long and nothing out-of-the-ordinary was reported.
Police officials told The Express Tribune that F-10 Markaz traders’ decision to not join the strike points to a rift within the trader unions. “The traders realise that certain groups in the city were manipulating union powers to serve their own interests, so they did not join the strike,” a police official said.
Traders in the city have been complaining for quite some time that the Rent Control Act (RCA) 2001, currently in effect, is heavily skewed towards the owners and ignores the fundamental rights of the tenants.
RCA 2001 does not clearly specify rules and regulations in case of disputes. This has caused different parties to draw their own interpretation of the law.
To address this issue, the government has been mulling over a new law to replace RCA 2001 for months but nothing concrete has been revealed.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 6th, 2010.
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