City woes: ‘Police, govt officials involved in illegal parking businesses’

Commissioner, DC, CCPO and others summoned in court on September 25.

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) has summoned top divisional and provincial officials to explain their failure in stopping illegal car parking businesses in the city.

The capital city police officer, AIG traffic, secretary transport, commissioner and deputy commissioner were ordered to appear in court.



A two-member bench comprising PHC Chief Justice (CJ) Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Musarrat Hilali took suo motu notice of a news article published on August 30 about illegal car parking on several roads. The news report was forwarded by the Human Rights Directorate of the PHC.

A ‘gang’ of influential people has been involved in running unlawful parking businesses dotting the city from Peshawar’s entry point to University, Charsadda and Warsak roads, observed the bench.

This has inconvenienced the public; a distance covered in minutes now takes hours, it added.

“Officials of the police, local government authority and transport department seem to be associated with these gangs and seem unable to take any action against these elements,” stated CJ Khan.

“The government conducts operations against them and the same businesses are restarted the very next day at exactly the same spot by bribing officials.”



Additional Advocate General Naveed Akhtar asked the court to grant the officials some time to find a solution to this problem. The court then ordered the CCPO, AIG Traffic, commissioner, deputy commissioner and secretary transport to appear before the court in person to explain why they had failed to find a permanent solution.

The court directed these officials to appear before the court on the next hearing on September 25.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 11^th, 2013.