KARACHI: Traffic jams on Korangi Road for second day
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, July 9: Korangi Road witnessed very severe traffic jams for a second day running on Wednesday.
Commuters returning from work in packed buses and minibuses kept sweating for hours in the sweltering weather. Those in cars and other private vehicles were not less exasperated by the snarl-ups that stretched for many kilometres — from the Kalapul end of Defence to the Korangi Industrial Area.
Consequently the connecting roads leading to the PAF base, Korangi Creek, and Baloch Colony had also to suffer the mess.
The epicentre of the jams was the socalled Hino Chowrangi, at Qayyumabad, which chokes off and on, particularly in the afternoon peak rush hours. There is no signalling system here but the traffic police have set up a big post next to the roundabout.
Among the sufferers were patients, whose suffering and the agony of those accompanying them aggravated in the jams.
“My wife was suffering from a neonatal problem and I had to take her to a hospital off University Road,” said a resident of Korangi Crossing. “Each way it took more than two hours to the taxi cab we were riding in to cover a stretch of three kilometres. It was simply disgusting.”
At times the traffic moved at a snail’s pace, at others the traffic did not stir at all for long durations. But the traffic police helpline, called Rehnuma, said there was no traffic jam. “Because of water on parts of the road, the traffic was just slow on the track,” said a sub-inspector on duty on ‘915’. “This is the information we have been given and have to pass on.”
Karachi Nazim Naimatullah Khan had ordered an inquiry into the Monday’s traffic jams that had paralysed the whole of the city. The inspector-general of police had also ordered action against those police officers responsible for manning the traffic. But the traffic police on Korangi Road, posted at Hino Chowrangi, seem to have paid no heed to either the Nazim’s or the IG’s resentment over the traffic jams.
