LAHORE, Aug 29: The new terminal for the Lahore-Delhi bus service at a rented hall of a commercial building on the Empress Road hardly meets the requirements of passengers.
The Lahore-Delhi bus service terminal was shifted from the Falettis' to the small hall and two adjacent rooms of the Ali Complex last month.
Passengers told Dawn that seating arrangements in the hall were not adequate. There was also no parking space. The relatives who come to see off around 50 passengers of the Delhi-bound bus have to park their vehicles on the Empress Road for over two hours.
The passengers are required to reach the terminal between 4am and 4:30am for security checks and other formalities. The bus leaves the terminal at 6am. More security checks are carried out at Wagah.
The passengers claimed that there were no security personnel available to ensure a feeling of safety at the terminal. They also claimed that passengers' luggage was scanned casually on the pretext that it would be scanned again at Wagah.
The passengers also complained that there was only one washroom at the rented terminal which was supposed to be used by both men and women. Lahore-Delhi bus service manager Iftikhar Satti admits that the terminal is quite inadequate and he is himself not interested to keep it there.
He said the terminal was shifted in a hurry after the privatization of Falettis' last month. Mr Satti said he had also visited a couple of other places in the city but could not find a suitable place.
He claimed that the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) had also asked the Punjab government to provide adequate space for a terminal for the Lahore-Delhi bus service but there was no response.
Mr Satti said the Falettis' terminal was best suited for this international bus service. "Here we are tenants, and this makes a great difference." Answering a question, he said the hall was spacious enough for the passengers and an adequate security system had been put in place to load passengers' luggage after proper scanning. He said a special security force escorted the bus up to Wagah.
He admitted that problems of parking space and washrooms did exist. He, however, said there were two more washrooms on the outer side of the building. Mr Satti also claimed that the new terminal was still better than the one at Delhi, which was located at the main bus-stand.
