Few takers for new vendor market

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, September 19

The decision of the local authorities to turn the only public parking lot in Jehangir Chowk area into a vendor market has failed to take the vendors off roadsides. Instead, it has sealed off prime parking space in the heart of the city.

The parking lot at Jehangir Chowk on the Exhibition Road was ordered shut in May this year and was turned into a vendor market. However, even after four months the market remains deserted as vendors refuse to leave the roadside and get housed in the former parking lot.

A former manager of the parking lot said the vendors were not keen on setting up shop inside the parking lot as they feared that it would impact their business and no one would come to the isolated market.

However, the decision has severely impacted the already grim landscape of the city centre. The parking facility that has been shut at Jehangir Chowk catered to an important commercial neighbourhood, which is located in the vicinity of several high-profile government office complexes.

The area around Jehangir Chowk houses Civil Secretariat, High Court, PDD office, Crime Branch office and several multi-storey malls.

A senior official of the Srinagar Municipal Corporation acknowledged that the lack of proper parking facilities was a serious problem.

“It needs to be addressed with a multipronged strategy,” an official said.

The official said the problem of “vendors and parking are synonymous”. “Their presence on roads is a problem and removing them is a problem because it involves the livelihood for hundreds of families,” the official said.

The failure of the government to provide proper parking facilities is also hitting at the pocket of the common man, who is being fined for wrong parking even as there is no parking available.

The private company which tows “wrongly parked” vehicles on behalf of the Traffic Police had made lavish profits by earning Rs 1.45 crore during the past five years. The company has towed over six lakh vehicles.

Srinagar is acutely short of parking facilities for its 2.61 lakh vehicles. It has a capacity to accommodate just 5,000 vehicles in the allotted parking yards.