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Swat
operation affects transport business
By Moayyed Jafri
LAHORE: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.
The News:Thursday, May 21, 2009
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