Ludhiana Traders under banner of PPBM stage protest against “faulty” parking rates in city

Ludhiana, December 2, 2022: Members of Punjab Pradesh Beopar Mandal under the leadership of state general secretary Sunil Mehra staged a protest infront of office of Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana (Zone-A) on Friday.

The protest was staged against inaction of the state government with regard to different parking rates being charged in different locations of mega city of Ludhiana.

Addressing the protestors, the mandal’s state general secretary Sunil Mehra and district general secretary Ayush Aggarwal, said the matter has already been brought to the notice of Punjab Chief Minister and Principal Secretary of Department of Local Government Punjab, but nothing concrete has been done so far, resulting to which there prevailed a strong resentment among the traders.  

They warned that if parking rates are not “corrected” within a week then they would be constrained to gherao the residences of Mayor Balkar Singh Sandhu and local MLAs Ashok Parashar (Pappi), Madan Lal Bagga and Gurpreet Gogi.  

They said they have already informed the chief minister Punjab and Local Government Punjab that there is an urgent need to compare parking rates in different locations of Mega City of Ludhiana as different rates of the parking are charged by the contractors of the parking which is clearly violation of rules and regulations of the parking concept in the city.

Adding, they said the mandal members are using the parking stops of their vehicles i.e., scooters, cars daily on their arrival from different locations and are feeling great difficulty when every parking area contractor is charging different rates of every different vehicle which is a clear case of deficiency in service in Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana.

They said that how is it possible that all the parking spots in the city were given to only one contractor rather than multiple contractors after comparing the contract prices. Since there is only one contractor in the city, this leads to raise a question about the integrity of the Corporation.

Further they added that every parking spot in the city has dire condition which lacks proper roads, lighting in the facility, lack of lifts and proper washroom facility especially in Municipal Corporation, Ludhiana (Zone-A) which adds as a fuel in the parking scam.

Addressing the protestors, they reiterated that there is a dire need to affix nominal rates of the parking of all parking stops in Mega City of Ludhiana because nobody is ready to tolerate injustice shown by contractors of the parking stops.

The Mata Rani Chowk Market president Davinder Singh Jolly, Vijay Chopra, Pramod Gupta, Nikhil Goyal, Neeraj Malhotra, Rama Narang, Surinder Kumar Singla, Kaka Dheer, Raj Sharma and Ravi Kumar were among those who participate in the protest.