KARACHI: Transporters not ready to discard old vehicles
By Muzaffar Qureshi
KARACHI, Jan 26: The Sindh ministry of transport, in consultation with the city district government Karachi, is to fix a registration benchmark to ban smoke-emitting buses, mini-buses and coaches registered between 1960 and 1980.
The Sindh High Court has set February 6, 2007 as the deadline for all the stakeholders to come up with a definite proposal to get the city rid of the vehicles responsible for environmental pollution that was assuming an alarming level. The court had sought the proposals after hearing a petition seeking a ban on old buses.
A senior official of the provincial ministry of transport told Dawn that the SHC chief justice had authorised Advocate General, Sindh, to convene a meeting of all stakeholders to discuss the problem and evolve a consensus agreement. The stakeholders, including the transport ministry, Traffic Police, city government, CDGK Transport department and Karachi Mass Transit Study, met on Tuesday last and discussed the issue.
According to an official of the ministry, there are 12,000 old buses and coaches currently plying on the city roads. Of these, about 2,500 have been registered during the specified period, i.e. 1960-1980.
He said that the ministry was reluctant to impose a ban on these buses as it could aggravate the already serious transport problem in the city.
A campaign was launched a few months back on the directive of the Sindh High Court during which smoke-emitting buses and coaches were detained but the campaign had to be abandoned due to the uproar and strike by the affected transporters.
The court had given the Traffic Police and the departments concerned three months to ensure that no smoke-emitting vehicle was operating in the city.
The official said that in 2005-06, the federal government had accepted a proposal for the procurement of 8,000 CNG buses for Karachi to help resolve its transport problem.
The provincial transport ministry, in consultation with the city government, had prepared the PC-I for the scheme and sent it to Islamabad in June 2006.
Since then, there has been no word on the fate of the PC-I and the scheme.
No proper public transport scheme has been designed for the mega city after the dissolution of the Karachi Road Transport Corporation (KTC) in 1997 and the Sindh Road Transport Corporation (SRTC) in 1999.The KTC had assets amounting to Rs2,000 million against its liabilities in the form of loans from the World Bank and Sindh government, customs duty on the import of tyres and tubes and utility bills, etc. The assets have since been transferred to the city district government.
Similarly, the SRTC assets were valued at Rs1,000 million against its liabilities of Rs800 million. The assets comprising 25 property units including 16 bungalows, were handed over to the Sindh Privatisation Commission for sale about two years back but there has been no action yet by the commission.
Meanwhile, transporters have vowed to resist the proposed ban on their old buses and coaches, and demanded compensation from the Sindh government on the plea that this would help them purchase new buses. They have also proposed that soft loans be extended to them by the Sindh government for the purpose. They argue that the old buses have served the pubic transport system in the city over a long period of time without any government support.