Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, May 16: Employees of State Road Transport Corporation (SRTC) today staged a protest against the Government’s proposal to turn decades old SRTC yard into a vendors mart.
The president SRTC Employees Association, Wajahat Ahmad, said the yard had been harboring hundreds of buses from decades which ply on different routes within and outside the city. “Now the Government is telling us to vacate this place. Where will we keep our buses? We have been serving people from decade’s right from this place. We oppose this decision and want Government to relook into it,” he said.
To ease urban chaos, the SMC last week decided to clear all the congested squares and sidewalks of the city which were encroached upon by vendors thereby streamlining the pedestrian and vehicular movement and declaring the pavements as ‘pedestrian only walks’
All the pavements along the Residency Road, Poloview and Jahangir Chowk leading to the main city square, which had little room left for pedestrians as vendors on both sides were taking much of the space, were cleared and the sidewalks were seen full of people who usually get down from the footpath to avoid bumping into street vendors or other pedestrians thereby effecting the overall traffic and crowd management in Srinagar city.