KARACHI, April 4: As fatal road accidents are on the rise, all the four commercial driving training schools in Sindh have been lying closed for the last eight years due to the bureaucratic labyrinths giving a free hand to untrained commercial drivers to play with citizens’ lives.

Out of the four schools, three were operated by the defunct Sindh Road Transport Corporation in Hyderabad, Khairpur, and Larkana, while one was operated in Karachi by the Karachi Transport Corporation. They were closed down in 1998 following the abandonment of the two corporations.

Sources in the Sindh Transport Department said the department had decided two years back to hand over these schools to the motorway police but so far no progress had been made in this regard due to shortage of funds.                                            

It would be pertinent to mention that former Sindh governor Mohammadmian Soomro had directed the provincial government in 2001-02 to hand over the KTC driving training school to the city government, but his directives could not be implemented due to bureaucratic hurdles, sources claimed. 

Later, the Sindh government decided under a mutual understanding with Ministry of Communication that the motorway police would reactivate these schools.

They said the Federal Communication Minister, Shamim Siddiqui, last month, had promised to release Rs4.5 million to the motorway police to renovate the KTC school building located in SITE area but no funds had so far been released.

The motorway police had also demanded of the provincial government to hand it over the KTC workshop, and Model Bus Depot.

According to sources, the existing covered area of the school is only 1.5 acres, while for making it a model school, about 30 acre area would be required.

However, the Sindh government had refused this demand and announced to hand over the depot and the workshop to the city government for the establishment of an intercity bus terminal under the cabinet decision of 2001-02. This issue too is yet to be resolved, sources maintained.     

In line with the motor vehicle ordinance 1969, commercial licenses can not be issued to the drivers until they acquire proper training of traffic rules and regulations from government training schools.

But, ironically, the license branch of the traffic police, in clear violation of the ordinance, has been issuing commercial licenses to untrained drivers for the last eight years posing serious threats to the citizens’ lives.—Online