SUKKUR: Some influential persons have set their eyes on a banana market in Khairpur, established 20 years ago on a plot on the town’s fringes which has now attained greater market value, and have started forcing the fruit traders to shift their shops to some other place, complain banana traders.

The president of the Banana Mandi Association, Fatah Din Phulpoto and office-bearer Malik Abdul Ghaffar who led a demonstration of traders and labourers a few days ago against the shifting of the market told journalists that despite paying annual tax in billions of rupees the traders were being displaced by a bunch of influential persons.

They said the fruit market was established 20 years ago on a plot of six acres, which had been obtained on rent from the Sindh Boys Scouts Association. The market was still paying Rs45,000 per month to the association, which owned a total of 20 acres, they said.

The plot had little market value in the past as it was on the town’s fringes with wild growth of vegetation but its value increased manifold after the establishment of the banana market, they said.

They alleged that influential people were trying to dispossess banana traders of the precious plot by creating problems for them and forcing them to shift.

They said the land-grabbers were trying to occupy the entire 20 acres but they would not leave the market at any cost.

They said that they had filed a petition against the land-grabbers in the Sukkur circuit bench of the Sindh High Court which had directed the district administration to stop work on construction of shops being carried out by the land-grabbers on the plot and later filed a contempt of court application when they did not stop the work.

The fruit market provided jobs to 5,000 poor labourers and was a source of income of millions of rupees annually for the district administration, they said, adding the market did Rs20 million business of purchase and sale of banana and paid Rs100,000 as tax to the government.

The SHC bench which had directed the deputy commissioner and assistant commissioner of Khairpur to appear in court on Wednesday along with relevant record about the fruit market put off its hearing to next date.