RAWALPINDI: After the city experienced massive traffic jams the last three days, the Senior Traffic Officer (STO) wrote to the concerned authorities, asking them to remove encroachments from the cantonment and city areas so the traffic problem can be helped.

He said members of terror organisations could also pose as vendors. In his letter to the station commander and the Rawalpindi Commissioner, STO Chaudhry Yousif Shahid discusses the traffic situation in the city and the problems created by encroachments.

The STO said in his letter that the Cantonment Board`s anti-encroachment staff has been letting illegal stall holders and vendors operate in the area despite an order by a senior justice of the Lahore High Court for clearing the roads and foot paths from encroachments. The court`s directions have not been followed so far.

He said that even on Sundays, stalls of old cloths are set up around the FG Model School for Boys on Mehfooz Road and from Metro Pole Chowk to Capital Cinema, which causes traffic jams and inconveniences commuters.

`The traffic police cannot remove these stalls because the vendors claim they have valid per-mission from Station Headquarters,` the STO said in his letters, adding that it will be impossible for traffic staff to ensure traffic moves smoothly in the winters if the stalls of old clothes were not removed from the cantonment area.

The old auto-spare part market has been another cause of the traffic mess in the city as many shopl(eepers have established worl(shops along the road.

The STO requested the station commander to warn the union leaders of the spare part market to remove the shops from the roads or action will be initiated against them under the Cantonment Act and the Pakistan Penal Code.

Due to the lack of parking space outside the Al-Amin Plaza, the Mall and other buildings, motorists park their vehicles on the road and it often becomes difficult for the police to clear the roads during VVIP movements.

Meanwhile, five vendors were booked by the Cantt police on the complaint of the city traffic police as they were blocking traf fic on Adamjee Road and did not have permission from the Cantonment Board.

Earlier, the Intelligence Bureau had expressed concern over the establishment of a clothes bazaar near the FG Model Boys Secondary School Mehfooz Road, which is also close to army establishments, as it poses a security threat.