RAWALPINDI: With the start of construction work on a commercial plaza on a vacant plot along Haider Road, visitors to Saddar have lost the only parking lot in the area.

The traders and visitors expressed resentment over the construction work on the plot allocated for parking.

They demanded that the Rawalpindi Cantonment Board should make alternative parking arrangements as the visitors were avoiding coming to main bazaar due to absence of parking space.

In 2015, when Food Street was inaugurated on Bank Road, the RCB had banned parking on this road and designated a separate parking space on Haider Road.

Commercial plaza is being constructed on the plot designated for parking

The gates were installed on Kashmir Road and Haider Road to stop vehicles from entering the food street and RCB officials were deputed to guide the visitors about the parking area.

However, with the passage of time, the food and pedestrian street was reduced to a small portion of a slip road between Haider Road and Bank Road. So does the parking area which is now being converted into a commercial plaza.

However, the visitors faced problem to get parking space in the main bazaar and they had no option but to park their vehicles on main roads and the slip roads.

“We have to park the car wherever we find space,” said Mohammad Anwar, a visitor to the bazaar.

“Parking in the Saddar is a difficult job. It will take more than an hour to find a vacant place to park car. I parked the car in front of a shopping mall as there was no parking in its basement,” said Mohammad Bilal, a visitor to Adamjee Road.

Several visitors were of the view that encroachments had reduced roads in Saddar to narrow strips.

“People parked their cars and motorcycles on both sides of Chotta Bazaar leaving very limited space to drive on,” Waseem Ahmed, a visitor to the road said.

Cantonment Traders Association General Secretary Zafar Qadri told Dawn that the RCB should not allow construction of shopping mall on the land allocated for the parking.

“Instead of facilitating the people, the civic body is creating problem for them. The businessmen are facing financial crisis as the visitors are avoiding main commercial hub due to shortage of parking space,” he said.

He said the RCB authorities had to make a comprehensive plan like construction of a parking plaza.

RCB spokesman Qaiser Mehmood was not available to comment on the issue.

However, RCB senior official said the plot had temporarily been converted into a parking area as the owners of the plot wanted to make it a parking plaza.

However, he said that the RCB wanted to find a long-lasting solution to parking issue in Saddar but it was facing shortage of funds.

“As a temporary solution, the RCB will open basements of commercial plazas on main roads of Saddar which had been converted into shops by their owners in violation of building by-laws,” he said.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2018