KARACHI: Stakeholders playing blame game: Public transport crisis
By Ali Hazrat Bacha
KARACHI, April 7: Owing to negligence of the authorities concerned, the condition of public transport in the metropolis is going from bad to worse. Not only is overloading and over-speeding a problem, but the physical structure of vehicles is also troublesome for passengers.
The Urban Transport Service (UTS), once considered a comfortable means of travelling, has also become a headache for commuters as most of the vehicles have lost their seats, handles, windowpanes and doorbells. The number of UTS buses is also decreasing for reasons best known to their owners. Also, transporters are openly violating traffic rules by accommodating men in the portion meant for women passengers.
The physical condition of mini-buses, coaches and buses is also pathetic. A police official told this scribe that all buses, except UTS vehicles, had completed their lifespan. Referring to official statistics, the source said that 58 per cent of the buses were of 1971 to 1980 models, 30pc were of 1961 to 1970 models, 3pc were of 1981 to 1990 models and 5pc were of 1950 to 1960 models.
The official said that about 600 buses were shifted from Punjab, NWFP and Balochistan, which were in extremely pathetic condition, but still plying on the roads of Karachi.
He said the government itself was encouraging the use of old vehicles, otherwise it would have stopped auctioning old official vehicles at various departments across the country. He said the government had notified the standard life of a vehicle as 10 years, or a distance of 100,000 miles, but in our country the vehicles were being used for an indefinite period.
Another official revealed that equipments like smoke and noise analysers were not available with traffic police to check the physical condition of a vehicle, while fitness certificates were being issued on the basis of visual observation only.
During the survey it was learnt from mechanics at different workshops that spare parts of these old buses were also not easily available, and they were repaired on a temporary basis.
The city government had constituted a vigilance committee in the first week of March this year to check violations of traffic rules by the operators of UTS and Metro Buses, but the committee is yet to function and play its role for improvement of the transport system.
Despite the fact that the Transport and Communication Department of the city government itself had noticed the violation of traffic rules by operators of UTS and Metro buses, no practical step has been taken so far.
Many points were raised against transporters by officials of the Transport Department, mainly to defuse the wheel-jam strike call of UTS operators for March 9. With postponement of the strike call, the issue of vigilance committee itself died down.
When contacted, an official of the Transport and Communication Department said that even though the vigilance committee had been formed, it avoided taking action because transporters wanted to politicise the issue and exploit the situation. He said the issue could create problems in the prevailing circumstances and the government did not want to create such a situation in the city. He said transporters had sought a three-month period to conform to the rules.
The operators of UTS buses and mini-bus owners, when contacted for their version, held the police responsible for the whole mess. They said transporters were forced to pay bribes on all roads and the only option open to transporters was overloading. The owners claimed the ratio of fare was very low and they could not afford even fuel charges in the prevailing circumstances.
The Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Traffic Police Falak Khurshid, when contacted, said that main reason for overloading was shortage of public transport. He said police personnel were active in taking legal action against those violating the rules. He said a campaign was launched to regulate the transport system and was continuing.
He said during the last two months, from February 1 to April 6,292 fitness certificates of low standard vehicles were cancelled, 16,453 were ticketed for accommodating male passengers in female compartments and fined the operators Rs1.645 million. He said 20,537 coaches, mini-buses and buses were ticketed, 4,343 were detained and a fine of Rs2.05 million was imposed on operators for carrying passengers on roof tops of the vehicles.
For improvement of the transport system, he proposed new transport schemes should be launched to accommodate the increasing number of passengers on all routes in the city.