KARACHI, Dec 23: The city witnessed another day of traffic jams on Saturday, when traffic came to a standstill or moved at a snail’s pace in major parts of the city, causing hardship to thousands of commuters.
A host of factors, including dug-up roads and lack of interest on the part of the traffic police, contributed to the frequent and prolonged jams.
In addition to the downtown areas, traffic jam was witnessed in the areas of Liaquatabad, Jail Chowrangi, Tariq Road, Rashid Minhas and Numaish, where commuters suffered inconvenience. Women and children were the worst sufferers as they were stranded in vehicles of public transport as well as private cars.
In the downtown areas traffic crawled on M.A. Jinnah Road, I.I. Chundrigar Road, M.R. Kiyani Road, Zaibunnisa Street, Saddar, and Lucy Star.
Traffic was stuck at Burnes Road and even on Court Road where usually snarls-up do not take place.
The Saddar area seemed to be the worst hit by the traffic muddle where the slow movement continued from afternoon into evening.
The entire network of traffic signals was seen out of order or shut down by the traffic police in order to regulate the traffic.
The city has been facing severe traffic jams for the past several weeks for no concrete reason.
The Saddar area has become prone to traffic jams apparently due to large-scale presence of roadside vendors. Police are making most out of the situation as they extort money from vendors to allow them to do business.
Recently Adviser to Chief Minister on Home Affairs Waseem Akhtar had chaired a meeting of senior officials directing them to remove the encroachments from the Saddar area to ease the traffic situation. However, such a drive is still awaited.
Secondly, irregular parking in Saddar is hindering the traffic flow.
Even double, triple rows of vehicles are seen parked in the Saddar shopping areas leaving little space for the traffic flow.
Moreover police officials posted in the Saddar area are now rarely seen panelizing the violators.
The jams are said to taking place and reoccurring due to a host of reasons. Officials often cite reasons such as to VIP movement, dug-up roads (developmental work), ever-increasing number of vehicles due to leasing and scarcity of manpower in traffic police. It may be pertinent to mention here that on December 21, the DIG traffic imposed a ban on the movement of commercial vehicles on Sharea Faisal during peak rush hours in an effort to ensure smooth flow of traffic.
However, the authorities concerned are yet to act for the rest of the city roads where traffic jams have become almost a daily routine.
