PIAF urges rehabilitation plan for affected traders of Shah Alam fire

LAHORE: Pakistan Industrial and Traders Associations Front (PIAF) has urged the government to announce a rehabilitation plan for the affected traders of the Shah Alam Market inferno. These views were expressed by the PIAF Chairman Sohail Lashari, while talking to a delegation of Shah Alam Market businessmen on Thursday.He said, “It was very unfortunate that despite the passage of more than half a month, neither any concrete steps for the rehabilitation of the affected nor any measures to avert any such incident in the future were taken by the government.”Lashari said that the provincial capital had met dozens of terrible fire incidents previously. He said that in 1996 goods worth billion of rupees turned to ashes at the Lahore Dry Port, in February 2004 a department store in Liberty Market was gutted, in February 2005 another department store in the same market faced huge loss due to a fire, 35 shopkeepers of Bhandara Centre, Ichhra, lost everything in a sudden fire, in February 2009 and December 2010, several fire incidents took place at the Hafeez Centre and various plastic and chemical units of Lahore Township Industrial Estate were also destroyed in a fire incident.He said that in most of the cases, the fire could have easily been controlled but due to lack of fire fighting facilities and poor condition of fire tenders, the situations went out of control.Unplanned: Lashari said that there was no denying the fact that such incidents were generally caused by the unplanned, mushrooming of business centres but yet again it is the duty of the concerned government departments to stop these unplanned constructions – Dailytimes