Increase in fares: brawls, altercations witnessed between commuters, Transporters

Brawls and altercations among commuters and public transporters were witnessed in many parts of the city after transport operators started demanding increased fares from the commuters in Multan on city and inter-city routes.
According to details, protest by the daily commuters were observed in many parts of the city including Dera Adda, Bus terminal, Gaddafi chowk, Hussain Agahi, Muzaffargarh, Muzaffarabad (Multan), Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalpur and some other parts of the city, when transport operators started collecting increased fares.
Many transport buses were stopped by the enraged commuters and traffic police were compelled to pacify the people after disagreement among commuters and bus conductors over new and old fares. A large number of commuters stopped the bus at Dera Adda, in front of newspaper's offices and started to beat the bus conductors. They also shouted slogans against the political government and termed the increase of fares as barbarian act, however the police rescued the driver and conductor of a bus when the altercation led to physical violence.
Another brawl witnessed at General Bus Stand, when on board commuters of inter city route stopped the vehicle forcibly and blocked the road which the caused a crippling traffic jam for at least one hours in the aftermath, the senior police officials of the traffic had to intervene to resolve the issue. Protest were also observed in Kabirwala, Khanewal, LOdhran, Kehror Pucca, Rajanpur areas where enraged people chanted slogans against the government and transporters while some youth also tried to pelt passing vehicles with stones.
They were demanding decrease in public transport fares at the inflation also broke the back of the poor people and current increases of fares become last straw of the camel back. On the other hand, the transporters argued that we did not increased the fares of transport in last month despite the last month of increase of petroleum products, they informed the fares were not raised accordingly and after threaten of strike call they increased the only 10 percent of the all fares of public transport.
"We have told the government last month that we would not increase the fares unless we were compelled and since 2009 the prices of petroleum levy increased in many times despite the decline of prices in international market, however at this month we had to increase the fares and it was highly justified," said the Chaudhry Shahbaz of Transporters Association and Abid Thaheem were of the opinion that they were compelled to take the unpleasant decision of increasing transport fares after transporters threatened of going on strike.