KARACHI, May 1: City government's transport department has left the citizens of Karachi at the mercy of private transport companies, who, taking full advantage of authority's lenient attitude, are exploiting passengers.

According to the people regularly travelling in the recently-inducted large buses under the Urban Transport Scheme in the city's public transport, they had taken a sigh of relief with the launch of these buses, but within weeks the bus operators started exploiting commuters on various pretexts.

"However, unbalanced fare system, overloading, repeated changes in routes without prior information to people and keeping buses off the roads on public holidays, especially on Sundays, are some of the examples of their exploitation," the commuters said.

Citing examples of various bus routes under the UTS, they said that overloading and running at "snail's pace" has become a hallmark of these buses, which was causing immense problems for daily commuters.

Majority of the Chinese-made CNG buses, being plied under the banner of Green Bus Transport Company, from Safora Goth to Tower via Gulistan-i-Jauhar, were not on roads as only four of these were being operated by the company, they added.

In addition, the buses were not operated on Sundays and other holidays, a daily commuter said, adding that these buses would not be operated from May 1 to May 3.

"Despite overloading and taking a lot of time to complete their journey, it was a facility for the people, but inconsistency in timing, besides their off-days, is creating immense hardships for people, especially the women and children," another commuter said.

Similarly, the metro buses being plied on various routes from Malir Cant, are another cause of concern for a large number of people owing to their limited space, irrational fare system, over-speeding and improper attitude of drivers.

"People have to wait for hours to have a glimpse of a metro bus of their route, and when they signal it to halt, driver often ignores despite having vacant seats, just because he is racing with another metro bus coming right behind him," they said.

"There seems no authority to check and control excesses of these private transport companies" they lamented.

On the other hand, changes in earlier notified routes, for instance the one in the route of the World-Wide Bus Service from Malir Cant to Tower via Karachi University, also created serious hardships for students and women, they said.

When contacted, an official of the CDGK's transport department said although there was no provision under the UTS that the newly-introduced buses would observe an off day on holidays, but they were being allowed to do so to strengthen these new companies.-PPI