FAISALABAD, March 2: Doctors and para-medical staff of the Allied Hospital staged a demonstration in front of the main gate here on Wednesday against the police failure in tracing out the bandits who gunned down an ambulance driver and injured four others during a dacoity bid.

The protesters also blocked traffic on the Jail Road and chanted slogans against the police. However, the police claimed that all-out efforts were being made to round up the bandits.

Meanwhile, DIG Sajjad Ahmed suspended from service Civil Lines SHO Mian Muneer for negligence in performance of duties. The DIG also issued a warning to the city DSP and ordered immediate arrest of the culprits.

Ambulance driver Haji Iqbal was killed while four others, including two policemen, sustained serious injuries when masked gangsters opened fire on the vehicle carrying salaries of the Allied Hospital employees and took away Rs0.5 million on Tuesday.

PETROL PRICE: Lawyers, traders and people from different walks of life have criticized the increase in the prices of petrol and declared it an act of the government to please its foreign masters.

At an emergency meeting of the District Bar Association held here on Wednesday with its president Salim Jahangir Chattha in the chair, lawyers said the increase was a part of the government agenda to destroy the national economy.

The meeting noted that the prime minister had issued a statement in 1999 when he was a finance minister that the petrol prices should be Rs50 per litre. Now the prices of POL products are being raised on the instructions of the international donor agencies at the cost of lives of poor countrymen, the meeting observed.

The meeting observed that a new wave of price hike would hit the people due to continuous enhancement in the petrol prices. Anjuman Tajiran president Sheikh Taj Mahmood and other office holders said the people had already been facing serious financial problems due to high prices of commodities and recent increase in the prices of petroleum products would force them to commit suicides.

PPP's divisional coordinator MPA Raja Riaz Ahmad said the government had failed to resolve the people's problems. The fortnightly increase in petrol prices was a clear proof that the government has no alternative to stabilize the economy.

City PML-N president former MPA Khwaja Islam said hollow slogans were being raised by the rulers about the growth of GDP while the fact was that the poor people were being taxed to run the national affairs. Representatives of different NGOs also criticized the increase in the prices and demanded the government to withdraw the existing system of the price fixation.