PESHAWAR, Jan 12: The city district government is working out a plan to introduce CNG-run buses for combating the increasing air pollution in the provincial metropolis, according to official sources.

The sources said, the city district government has decided to implement the federal government plan to run around 50 CNG-run buses in Peshawar.

The government is also designing a traffic management plan according to which the recently extended Khyber Road — from Rehman Baba Square to Gora Qabristan — will be specified only for the proposed CNG buses.

A gas station would also be installed on the road to provide the compressed natural gas to the buses on subsidised rates.

A meeting was held in Islamabad in December, which was attended by the officials of the ministry of petroleum, ministry of environment, chief secretaries and city district Nazimeen of Peshawar, Lahore, Quetta and Karachi, an official said.

Under the plan, the sources said, the four city district governments would acquire about 200 CNG-run buses, 50 vehicles each, from China and to be run in the provincial capitals.

The Sindh government has already imported four CNG-run buses from China for Karachi following which the federal government decided to extend the CNG-run buses to other urban centres of the country.

The sources said that the city district governments have unanimously asked the ministry of petroleum to convince the federal government to withdraw custom duty on the import of CNG buses to curtail its prices.

At present the government receives about 46 per cent custom duty on CNG buses that affects prices of the vehicles.

An official of the environment department said that during the meeting the city district governments tabled proposals to the ministry of petroleum to bring down custom duty to zero level on CNG buses and provide natural gas on subsidised rate to the buses.

As the prices of CNG-run buses are much higher than those run with diesel, the government should withdraw custom duty to enable the project to take off, he added.

“Such steps will make the vehicles cost-effective”, said the official and added that the government would have to give some incentives to the private sector to financially make the project viable.