Muzamil Shah.
Srinagar:
The decision to shift the General bus stand Batamaloo has been taken and in Parimpora will be the new general bus stand however shopkeepers at Batamaloo are in a fix as they are at the verge of ‘bankruptcy’ and ‘closure’.
“Business will be over,” says Abdul Hameed, a shopkeeper at Battamaloo.
These double storied shops, Hameed says, were built on 2009 and auctioned in 2011 by Srinagar development authority and Srinagar Municipal committee.
“I have paid nine lakh fifty thousand to get attorney of this shop for twenty years and pay monthly fare. I got loan from bank which is still pending. The shifting will be a set back to my business,” Abdul Hameed said.
Shopkeepers decry the fact that high court ordered shifting of the valleys oldest bus terminal in 2005 but the order was not implemented, but authorities in knowing of the order, in 2007, build the shops and auctioned them in 2011.
“Why would a business man buy a shop in Battamaloo, an idiot knows, it’s the goodwill of the area which gets him payback. Otherwise who invests in a lost game,” Abdul Hameed explains the logic he invested into buying shop in Battamaloo area.
For the shopkeepers who bought newly built shops in 2011, authorities ‘simply ditched’ them, they ‘sucked out money that they knew would go to waste’.
Thousands of families, abdul hameed puts the number at fifty thousand, earn their bread and butter out of the daily commotion of bus terminal.
For G M Bhat, General Secretary KMDA, “the decision of shifting KMDA was a disaster for the affiliated transport of the KMDA association. Same is going to happen with these shopkeepers, as it is not only the shifting of buses, it is shifting of the whole business”.
Battamaloo bus terminal is hub of all kinds of business activities, wholesalers, stockists and distributors of all kinds of commodities are stationed in and around the bus terminal.
The reason is simple, as the business men there mention, ‘transportation’.
“Transportation is the backbone for all the business men like us. Not only for we in Battamaloo but our buyers in far flung areas of Kashmir,” Showkat Hameed, a wholesaler of ready made garment confides.
Vehicular workshops too fear, not only for work but the dangers their workforce is going to face. Hameed Ahmad, a bus mechanic says, “my whole business lies on busses. As bus terminal shifts, I will be jobless. Neither I can afford to shift nor will selling fetch me the bare minimum cost. Bus terminal is everything for us,” Ahmed said.
“I have paid eight lakhs to get the shop in this stand, but now this shop will be of no
use for me. My whole family will suffer and also the families of my salesmen’s,” Farooq Rehmani said at Iqbal Market inside the bus terminal.
Congestion, the reason which is at the base of the shifting of the bus terminal is contested by business men and the transporters alike.
For them the traffic mess is not for them to pay for, but the authorities themselves should be held responsible for that.
“Why don’t they fix responsibility for who lets the hawkers occupy half of the roads around the terminal, why don’t they hold the traffic department responsible who eases ‘so called traffic mess when its VIP movement’ and as soon it goes, mess returns,” a member of the transport association told INS wishing not to be named.
“I am a graduate and run a hotel here, who is going to come to me now. Did government think for a minute. Why are our representatives spectators of us being robbed of our hard earned workplaces,” visibly perturbed Khursheed laments.
Shabir ahmad spokesperson (ATJCC) while talking to INS said, “I am trading here from last four decades, I think the decision of shifting of Batamaloo stand to parimora is going to create a great deal of hardship and chaos to me as well as lakhs of traders and general public as well.”
“Thousands of families are being pushed to wall, God save us all,” Shabir prayed.
