PESHAWAR, April 24: A high-level meeting, to be held anytime soon, is to reclassify Peshwar city roads, sources in the transport sector told Dawn on Thursday.

According to them, 20 new routes would be identified on the outskirts of Peshawar to reduce burden on the intra-city routes.

“Big commercial vehicles would be diverted to routes passing through Ring road, whereas only the small ones would be permitted to ply on the city routes,” said the sources, adding that this would ease congestion on the city roads.

According to the Motor Vehicle Ordinance, 1965, and Motor Vehicle Rules, 1969, a vehicle more than 9-year-old is not allowed to run on category A roads.

Likewise, an 11-year-old vehicle cannot run on category B roads.

But the vehicles plying in different towns and districts of the province are more than 25 years of age, said an official, adding that the owners and drivers paid bribes to the police and went scot-free.

Lack of coordination among various departments dealing with the problems of public transport has been causing hardships to the public as well as losses to the national exchequer, the official said.

“The public transport vehicles in the province roughly total 258,000 — 13,000 buses, 23,500 minibuses, 105,000 trucks, 15,000 rickshaws and 115,000 miscellaneous,” he said.

According to him, the number of unregistered vehicles might be more than double the registered ones, which caused a Rs50 million loss to the national kitty on an annual basis.

In fact, the existing transport system is working under various departments, such as traffic police, excise & taxation department, motor vehicle examination department, environmental protection agency, regional district transport authority and directorate of transport, which has literally crippled the functioning of the transport system throughout the province.

For instance, the directorate of transport issues route permits, but it has no means to check the same.

The department earned for the government Rs60 million annually, and thus became the second biggest revenue earner after excise and taxation. But the facilities given to the department are next to zero, as only two men are tasked to take care of its functioning.

The directorate of transport started functioning in November last year, but owing to shortage of staff it is yet to deliver.

Unlike other provinces, where fully-fledged departments work under a secretary, the transport department has been placed under secretary environment, who remains preoccupied with other matters.

The basic functions of the directorate of transport include issuance of route permits, fixation of fares, classification of roads and bus-stands.

Officials of this department say they do not have the workforce and the resources to check vehicles, nor the authority to penalize them. Most transport department functions are performed by the police.

The Punjab government had placed a special police contingent at the disposal of the transport department to carry out checking of the documents and date of manufacture, etc., of the vehicles.

The complicated transport system had also been affecting the transporters, who needed to run from pillar to post to get their problems resolved.

After the implementation of the devolution plan, the system had become even more intricate for the people connected with the transport business.

The government had established regional district transport authorities at each district but the transporters still visited Peshawar for many of their problems.

The official said that most officials were displaced or sent to the districts, which affected the work at the provincial level a great deal.