Eerily silent: Road leading to Civil Secretariat a no-go area

Once bustling with restaurants, thoroughfare now off-limits .

PESHAWAR:

Bustling restaurants and small public transport vehicles are a thing of the past on Police Lines Road which leads to the Civil Secretariat Peshawar. There was a time when locals could stop by for lunch. However, the small hotels are now closed and not a single rickshaw plies on the now eerily silent road.

In 2010, the police department closed the road to the general public for the sake of its own security. Police Lines Road, which connects with two of the main gates of the Civil Secretariat, was barricaded and riddled with a series of police check posts where pedestrian and vehicles are checked every step of the way.



Since no private vehicle is permitted parking on the premises of the secretariat, visitors have to return to GT Road and struggle to find some spot before walking back to the building.

“The police think the secretariat is their property,” says Mohammad Latif, a government employee at the Civil Secretariat. “If you have a car bearing a green number plate, you can pass through the check-posts without being stopped by the police. However, if you turn up in a private car or motorcycle, you will be harassed by police and then the security guards of the secretariat.”

According to Latif, after the security protocol, the officials simply turn you back on your not-so-merry way.

Three of the secretariat gates on Police Lines Road, the MPA Hostel Gate and Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum Road on the Central Police Office side are closed for vehicles.

Anwar Khan, another government official, calls the Civil Secretariat a “no-go area” and accuses police guards deployed at the gates of taking monthly bribes from government employees to park their vehicles.

“Hundreds of people have businesses with government departments; ministers who sit inside the secretariat are not harassed in the name of security,” he says. “If you don’t bother to check a government vehicle, you never know what is being carried inside.”

He says peons have to be sent all the way to Shoba Bazaar to get lunch as police has eliminated all small hotels on the road.

“You could eat tikkas, kababs and other foods and drinks, but now there is just one canteen in the secretariat,” Khan says. “The officers go to RA Bazaar for lunch.”

In the works

When asked about problems caused by increased security, Administration Secretary Hassan Mehmood Yousafzai says a parking plaza adjacent to Sharqi police station, with the capacity to accommodate several hundred vehicles, is to be completed by June 30, 2015.

“However, the project has been extended by three more months.”

The secretary added transport-cum-security stickers will be issued to vehicles of secretariat employees and a database will be prepared for security checks at the entrance. Similarly, outsiders’ vehicle entry will be permitted to the parking plaza.

He says another parking plaza with a two-storey building is under construction along with the industries department at the Civil Secretariat which will further ease parking problems.

Yousafzai says there are a series of security check posts in the area due to the sensitivity of the place.

“If one check post gets attacked, the other can respond.” Yousufzai explains. He says the area is a red-zone where the police have their own security arrangements.

The secretary says the secretariat has its own internal security, while the Chief Minister House, Governor House and Peshawar High Court, to which the secretariat is attached, have their own security.

“The secretariat is not a public place,” he explains. “There will be trespassing if the public is allowed to use the road. People will make it a passage.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 1^st, 2015.