Boycott Murree becomes trend on Twitter, citizens lash out at hotel owners
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, MNA, Sadaqat Ali Abbasi on Monday assured that the government would take stringent action against all those departments which found guilty in Murree painful incident.
Under a new traffic management system, a connection road to Murree would be further improved on priority basis.
Talking to media, Abbasi informed that a probe committee, supervised by the additional chief secretary from Punjab Home Department, would soon submit a detail report in this regard.
He said that “indiscriminate action” would be taken against those found negligent in their duties.He expressed sorrow over the deaths of people who stuck in the heavy snow.
He said that tourists who had been stranded in cars were rescued and shifted to rest houses and hotels. “Vehicles and tourists exceeding the specified limit would not be allowed to enter Murree in future”, he added.
“I never saw such a huge snowstorm in last fifteen years, he said, adding, a record breaking snowfall in Murree had occurred after decades”. He also urged the media to create awareness among the people about weather in Murree.
Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Ali on Monday said that snow had been removed from major high-ways of Murree, but due to heavy snowfall, the roads were slippery, and there was ice on both sides of the roads.
According to the DC office spokesman, the District administration and related departments were work-ing hard to remove snow from Murree’s internal city link roads and to fully restore the hill station’s traf-fic.
He asked the tourists to refrain from visiting the Murree and its surrounding areas until the entire rescue operation was completed and urged the resi-dents to cooperate with the district administration.
The #Boycott Murree has become a trend on twitter where the social media users are lambasting the hotel owner of the hilly resort who tried to fleece the trapped tourists by demanding high fares during Friday’s fierce blizzard in which 23 daytrippers froze to death.
The twitterati were of the view that the hotel owners showed an extreme kind of apathy by capitalizing on people’s miseries as they raised rates of hotel rooms up to Rs50,000 for one night.
The prices of other eatable items were also jumped exorbitantly as an egg was being sold for Rs500. Even locals charged money for pushing the trapped vehicles of the helpless tourists. They charged Rs1,500 for small cars and Rs3,000 for big cars.
According to netizens, not only the city administration but the hoteliers too showed their ugly face. A deluge of angry posts and videos could be seen on the social media platform.
A tourist said that a hotel room that was usually cost Rs3,000 was available for Rs40,000. The hotel owners charged Rs1,000 for turning on heater for just an hour.
