Roadside encroachments: the other side

[Naveed Yaseen]

By M. Waqar Bhatti
Inayat Ali is a pushcart vendor who has been selling seasonal fruits at a street in Saddar Town for 22 years, but half the money he earns is extorted before he reaches home on a daily basis.

The earnings he scrapes together to feed his family and educate his children end up in the pockets of officials of the land department of the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) just so he can have permission to park his cart on the street. “I pay Rs100 to the police, Rs50 to the traffic police, and Rs25 to the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation,” said Ali helplessly.

Ali has to pay the extortion because his business is not legally registered. His pushcart is considered an encroachment on city roads, and along with thousands of others like him, he must pay ‘protection money’ to keep operating. Due to the mammoth population of the city, it is impossible to determine the exact number of pushcarts and stalls working off the roads, but it is suspected that millions of rupees are extorted everyday from the people who run them.

Some days, Ali earns so little he cannot even afford to pay the protection money, but he is lucky: because he has been here for so long, he has friends in the right places and so can get away with waiting a whole day before paying them. There are also days when Ali earns just enough to pay off the officials, but has nothing left to take home. “There have been many times when we had nothing to eat except for the fruits on my pushcart,” he told The News. “The government should get rid of these people so that I can run my business in peace,” he added fervently.

Ali is not educated, but he knows that matters are different in other countries. “In India, every pushcart is registered with the local authorities and issued a number, like the registration number of vehicles,” he said. “These pushcart vendors pay tax to government and don’t have to pay anyone else.”

Ali admitted that he and others like him obstruct traffic, but argued that they had become part of the system, and that it would be impossible to get rid of them entirely. “If carts and stalls are registered and vendors made to pay a fee to the local government, billions of rupees could be earned and better spent,” he pointed out.

Najmuddin Sikandar, Former Director Land and current District Officer (DO) Recovery CDGK, agrees. “If such people are brought under some legal mechanism with certain conditions, it could not only provide them with relief but enhance the local government’s revenue,” he said.

Sikandar explained that during the era of Abdul Sattar Afghani, different administrators had attempted to draw this underprivileged and untapped sector into the tax net, but their efforts were futile. Gulberg Town was the first to install cabins in its limits and regularise such encroachments, but the project failed. Similar attempts were made in Urdu Bazaar and Hyderi market, but it has been learnt that they only proved to be a means for certain CDGK officials to mint money. “The groups extorting money are so powerful that they have suppressed all efforts to have a reserved hawker zone,” said Sikandar, a statement confirmed by another CDGK official on condition of anonymity.

“The stakes in this business are very high,” said the official. “Every month, billions of rupees are extorted out of these pushcart vendors, stalls and cabin owners. Even Islamabad gets a share of the money.” The official added that the issue had become so complex that nothing short of a revolution would settle it.

“It is a multi-billion-rupee issue,” he said. “Towns in Karachi have the authority to take a decision and improve their monetary situation, but there are hundreds of people in the city who have become millionaires through precisely such extortion.” Despite the pessimism of those in higher offices, Inayat Ali is hopeful that elected representatives may be able to bring about a change. “We have voted for them. It is now their responsibility to protect us.”

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=161460