Srinagar, May 3: Boulevard shop owners dealing in handicraft items Thursday suspended their work to protest against the vendors selling fake articles in the name of Kashmir art. They also demanded limiting the number of vendors in the area.
The handicraft dealers started protest demonstrations when a team of officials from the Handicraft Department arrived in the area for routine inspection. The handicraft dealers demanded that “vendors should be removed from the area as they are eating up the business of shopkeepers.”
Protestors demanded that the authorities should immediately remove the street vendors who occupy the footpaths and sell ‘fake ‘articles in the name of Kashmiri handicraft goods.
“We are not against the checks conducted by any department but we want justice. We pay all the taxes towards government, but suddenly vendors open their stalls in front of our shops and start selling fake articles in the name of Kashmir art. But no one initiates any action those erring vendors,” shopkeepers said.
The shopkeepers threatened that they won’t open their shops till the government imposes blanket ban on street vendors at Boulevard road.
“These vendors are giving bad name to our handicraft trade as they sell handicraft items brought from outside the state in the name of Kashmir handicraft,” Pervaiz Ahmad, a handicraft shop owner said.
“These days we are hardly receiving any tourists as they purchase items from these vendors because of cheap cost, but they (tourists) are not aware that these vendors are cheating them by selling Amritsar shawls and carpets and branding them as Kashmiri items,” he said.
“It is an irony that these vendors are selling machine-made shawls in the name of Kashmiri Pashmina shawls. Yesterday one of my clients was cheated when he was sold a shawl and was told by the vendors that shawl is Pashmina,” Bashir Ahmad, a handicraft dealer said and added that if the authorities don’t take action, time will come when the Kashmir’s handicraft sector will get destroyed by these unscrupulous elements.
“We carry out regular market checks to ensure that the vendors don’t sell imported items in the name of Kashmiri goods,” Deputy Director, Quality Control Handicraft Department told Greater Kashmir.

Lastupdate on : Thu, 3 May 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Thu, 3 May 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Fri, 4 May 2012 00:00:00 IST