October 25, 2001	Thursday	Shaba'an 7, 1422

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HARIPUR, Oct 24: The Provincial Transport Authority, NWFP’s ill-conceived policies pertaining to allotment and renewal of route permits has been causing a loss of thousands to the national exchequer for the past several years in Haripur, reliable sources told Dawn the other day.

The PTA, in an apparent bid to get rid of the old and obsolete models of private passenger vehicles plying on intra-city and inter-provincial routes, had in 1990 banned all those models of passenger buses whose model was older than 1985 on the A-grade routes of the city.

The PTA declared Haripur-Abbottabad, Haripur-Rawalpindi and a distance of 7 km of Khanpur route from Tarnawa to Taxila as A grade routes while a long distance of 27 km from Haripur to Tarnawa was, surprisingly, declared as C grade, forcing the drivers of vehicles plying on Haripur-Taxila route via Khanpur to complete their route up to Tarnawa rather than Taxila.

However, according to PTA’s rules, any passenger vehicle’s route would stand cancelled if it failed to complete its given route. There are over 100 buses and a number of wagons of 1985 model or older, plying on A grade routes like Haripur-Taxila via Khanpur, Haripur-Taxila via Hattar, Haripur-Abbottabad, Haripur-Rawalpindi and some other local routes.

Since not a single passenger bus or wagon was manufactured by the Ford company after 1986, the owners of old models, when pressed hard and penalized frequently, opted to get the documents of their vehicles changed to show them as less-older, in connivance with the unscrupulous at the excise and taxation department.

However, these vehicles were still challaned by the authorities declaring their documents as fake. As a result, the owners of these old-model buses and wagons, which were banned on A-grade routes, stopped getting their routes renewed under PTA regulations, inflicting a loss of millions to the public purse.

“Yes, we do not pay for route permits as the authorities concerned have banned our vehicles of down models on A-grade routes. But we are not to blame,” said Riaz Khan, a transport unionist.

“It is unjustifiable that only 7km of Khanpur-Taxila route is declared A grade while the remaining 27km distance is C grade,” he said.

The PTA charges a bus between Rs2,200 and Rs2,500 for renewal of route permit annually.

Interestingly, these passenger buses and wagons, which had been declared unfit for carrying passengers on A grade routes, were still getting passed and declared fit for the purpose of plying on roads by the MVE office on getting them pay token taxes every six months.

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