Swat operation affects transport business in country

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Moayyed Jafri

Transport owners across the country, including Lahore, are facing the lack of manpower as 80 percent of their drivers and conductors have returned to their homes in Swat and the NWF to protect and support their families.

Mostly, the people associated with the transport business belong to the NWFP or the northern parts of Balochistan. After military operation, they have moved to the camps set up for IDPs to take care of their families.

Pakistan Transport Owners Federation chairman Aazam khan Niazi and provincial presidents of the Union, while talking to The News said that seven to eight out of every ten employees including the drivers, conductors and mechanical maintenance crew had returned to their native lands, causing shortage of manpower in the business.

The transport owners said they, preferably, hire Pathans because of their honest and devotion to work.

They added they had offered their workers an option to bring their families with them but most of them were unwilling to do that, they reason being that majority of them were unable to shoulder the expenses of a family in an urban set-up.

The transport owners, including those who rent out rickshaws at mass level, stated that their business had taken a nosedive because most of the people who rented rickshaws had left for their homes.

All Pakistan Goods Transport Union also mentioned a similar trend, stating that they were with all their workers who had been affected due the military operation and were trying their best to help them in any way possible.

Almost all transporters agreed that they had been taking for granted this important faction of our society, only realizing their inevitability after their departure.

They said they had tried to accommodate the families of some employees, but they could not afford to rehabilitate the whole population attached with their workers.

Aazam Niazi and other office bearers showed their willingness to provide the facility of free buss service to carry all the families affected to safe areas of the camps or to any other destination they wanted to go to. They said all they wanted was fuel, security and approval form the Punjab Government.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=178744