LAHORE: Traffic remained jammed on The Mall and other adjacent roads due to a protest by industrialists in front of Governor’s House causing massive commuter inconvenience.
The industrialists were demanding the smooth supply of gas and protesting against GST. Cars, motorbikes and public transport stuck in the traffic and people have to wait hours for reaching their destination. Roads adjacent to The Mall including Davis Road, Jail Road and adjoining roads were cluttered with vehicles.
Traffic police continued to face difficulty in controlling the traffic resulting in long queues of vehicles at all side roads. Traffic was bumber to bumber from Canal Bridge on The Mall to the Governor’s House. The impact could be seen till Regal Chowk. People tried to using alternate routes for reaching their destinations but they too were cluttered. The commuters showed their displeasure over the protest and said it is not the way to pressurize the government.
“The protest ruined my day, as I could not reach the passport office in time and could not collect my passport,” lamented a student Shehbaz Amjad adding if the industrialists are unhappy with the government then they should go to Punjab Assembly rather than the Governor’s House. “The Punjab governor is not authority to help them in smoothening the supply of gas, it is Punjab Chief Minister, who should be addressed,” said another citizen Jamil Ather adding that a road protest does not suit the mighty industrialists.
Various trade and industrial associations of Lahore on the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (LCCI) call staged a sit-in outside the Governor’s House on Monday against discrimination in gas supply to industrial units and the Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST). Thousands of protesters belonging to leading trade and industrial associations and chambers of commerce in Punjab including Lahore, Sheikhupura, protested for more than two hours and chanted slogans against discrimination in gas supply and apparent enforcement of the RGST.
The protesters were also carrying banners with slogans against the federal government’s discriminatory attitude. Addressing the protesters, business leaders said that the gas suspension plan was a well thought-out conspiracy against the federal government and people sitting at the helm of affairs must take notice of it. They said that the entire industry and industrial workers had been pushed to the wall.
“It is not the industry alone that is suffering badly but it is the entire economy that is facing unprecedented challenges,” the protesters said. They said that the federal government was committing an ‘economic massacre’ of industrial workers by turning the province into a trading place instead of a manufacturing hub.
They said that owing to wrong government policies, sufferings of the business community were multiplying with every passing day and they were unable to cope with the day-to-day challenges.
The protesters said that industrialists would not be able to pay their dues if corrective measures were not taken immediately. “The government is creating future defaulters as nobody would be able to pay banking dues when his industrial unit would be on verge of closure.” The businessmen said that they were surprised that the ruling elite were unmoved over discrimination in gas distribution.
This discrimination should immediately be stopped, the protesters demanded. They said that the economic crisis would further deepen in the coming days, as the industry had failed to fulfill the existing export orders. The protesters said that those who were talking of an economic revival in the given circumstances were actually befooling the masses, as the issue had already gone out of hands and it would need special measures to control the situation.
