Another year, another promise of transport dept

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Every year in its first half, the Sindh government dutifully announces intra-city bus projects for Karachi, most of which never materialise.This year too, after uncountable missed deadlines and numerous failed promises, the Sindh government has once again announced the expansion of the Peoples Bus Service in Karachi under which it has been running a few buses in the city.According to a statement issued by the transport department, the Peoples Bus Service will be expanded through theaddition of 1,000 luxury air-conditioned buses, of which 200 buses will be brought in to the city in 60 days. However, the transport department is yet to determine the exact routes and fares of these buses. The terminals of these buses have also not been identified.In the first phase of the project, according to Sindh Transport Secretary Ghulam Abbas Detho, 200 buses will be brought to the roads of Karachi within two months. “A few of these 200 buses could be brought in before Eid,” he told The News.A soft launch ceremony for the project was held in the Sindh Secretariat on Thursday in which an agreement between the Sindh Mass Transit Authority (SMTA) and South Korean company Daewoo was signed.Failed promisesIn March 2017, after the Punjab government launched feeder route buses in Lahore, the Sindh government announced that it would launch 600 new public buses in Karachi the same year, but it never happened.According to the 2017 plan that never materialised, transporters were to bring in 600 buses under a five-year loan programme of the Sindh Modaraba Management Limited (SMML). It was proposed that the government would itself not procure the buses as buses operators would themselves acquire the buses with the help of the five-year SMML loan.The loan included a 30 per cent down payment, of which 15 per cent would have to be paid by the transporter and the remainder by the government. The transporters were supposed to return the sum to the government after five years.As the project did not see the light of day, the Sindh government in January 2018 announced another transport project for the city. Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah approved Rs195 million for the new intra-city bus project under which 32 buses were to be operated on Sharea Faisal in the first phase and more buses on five different routes in the second phase. This project also never turned into a reality.Then all of a sudden, then transport minister Nasir Hussain Shah launched 10 air-conditioned buses in April 2018 under the name of Peoples Bus Service as a pilot intra-city bus project with zero government investment. The government also announced that it would add 40 more buses to the fleet of the Peoples Bus Service the same year but it failed to keep the promise.Right now, only a negligible number of buses are plying in the city under the Peoples Bus Service. The buses are owned and operated by Daewoo bus service. The company has also obtained route permits to run these buses from Dawood Chowrangi to Tower via Sharea Faisal. However, on April 15 this year, the operation of buses was stopped for two days as the company’s agreement with the Sindh government was not renewed.Current projectIn order to expand the Peoples Bus Service project, the Sindh government has decided to issue new route permits to the same company.SMTA Managing Director Iqtedar Ahmed told The News that work on the project was in a preliminary state and they were working on finalising the routes of the new buses.As for the subsidy, he clarified that the Sindh government was not providing any subsidy for the project but only facilitating it by issuing the route permits and bus depots. The bus fares, he said, could be little higher than those of dilapidated buses available in Karachi as the new buses would be air-conditioned. “We will, however, try to come up with as much nominal rates as we could,” he assured.As for the depots, the transport secretary explained that a few of the bus terminals had been encroached upon and the government needed to clear the encroachments before handing over the depots to Daewoo. The buses, he said, would run on compressed natural gas (CNG), for which purpose the provincial government would request the federal government for uninterrupted supply of the CNG for these buses specifically.

from The News International - Karachi http://bit.ly/2YlGBft
The News International - Karachi