KARACHI: UTS ghosts haunt new public transport scheme
By Arman Sabir
KARACHI, July 11: The city government is making efforts to launch a CNG bus project and is offering transport companies some incentives in this regard. However, transporters remain apprehensive and refer to the failed Urban Transport Scheme (UTS) which was launched in 2002 with similar promises but fell flat.
Dawn has learnt that in terms of the latest plan, there is already some confusion over exactly how much of the loan’s mark-up is to be paid by the federal government.
At a meeting on Wednesday, City Nazim Mustafa Kamal announced that the federal government had approved a public-private partnership project to import 8,000 CNG buses into Karachi and had allocated Rs500 million to it. Additionally, he said, the federal government would pay 80 per cent of the mark-up on loans obtained by public transporters in this regard and the city government would help transporters get privileges from banks and other financial institutions.
Mark-up matters
However, an official who was present at the meeting told Dawn on the condition of anonymity that, in fact, the federal government offered to pay only 60 to 70 per cent of the mark-up on such loans, and Rs500 million had been allocated for this purpose.
This sum was rejected by representatives of transporter groups, who demanded an increase to 80 per cent. The official confirmed that the 80 per cent figure had not yet been approved by the federal government and a decision was expected within the next 10 days. He added that the city or federal governments would not provide guarantees to financial institutions and transporters wishing to benefit from the scheme would have to make their own arrangements to acquire loans.
The Wednesday meeting, attended by the additional secretary of the government of Pakistan’s Planning Commission, Asif Bajwa, and the chief of transport and communications of the Planning Commission, Aijaz Ahmad, also promised that supporting infrastructural development would include CNG filling stations, bus stops, bus routes and parking facilities. Other participants included the director-general of the Karachi Mass Transit Cell, Malik Zaheerul Islam, the EDO transport and communications, Mohammad Athar, DIG Traffic Falak Khursheed and the chiefs of Karachi Transport and the UTS union, Ittehad Irshad Bokhari and Rana Muner, respectively.
Why UTS failed
However, key areas of Karachi’s transport issues remain unaddressed.
One of these is the re-registration of buses in other provinces, a matter which caused the city government great embarrassment in the wake of the UTS initiative. Companies that had obtained buses under agreement with the city government’s 2002 project later took the vehicles to Punjab, where their re-registration constituted a great setback to the UTS.
In the current instance, the federal government has not assured the city government that a ban will be imposed on the re-registration of buses in other provinces for a specific period of time. Sources pointed out that should the city government fail to learn from past mistakes, the new project would suffer the same fate.
Five years ago, the city government put its weight behind the UTS and promoted it as the solution to the city’s transport problems. Soon after, however, the Green Bus Company, which had imported 28 large CNG buses, folded after failing to follow the schedule of payments. Further shadows were cast on the UTS when a second company, Trans Livia, which had imported 25 buses under the scheme, failed to pay the loan instalments and its vehicles were repossessed by the bank concerned. As mentioned earlier, other companies took their vehicles out of Karachi. While officials claim that the number of large buses operating under the UTS once touched the 300 figure and have gradually fallen to 230, sources in the transport department maintain that no more than 100 buses imported under the 2002 scheme are currently operating in Karachi.
Transporters who attended the Wednesday meeting at the city nazim’s office said that the UTS failed because of the disparity between fares and diesel prices. “The former Oil Companies Advisory Committee (OCAC) raised diesel prices every 15 days but bus fares did not match the trend,” said one representative, suggesting that since there is a slight difference between diesel and CNG consumption, this could be increased to give the transporter the benefit.
The city nazim assured the meeting’s participants that such issues would be discussed in further consultative meetings, and the federal government would identify standard models and makes of the CNG buses so that fiascos such as the Green Bus Company would not be repeated. Commenting on banks’ seizure of buses leased under the UTS, transport officials said that transport firms had over-invoiced in an effort to have huge sums sanctioned against the procurement of the buses, and had subsequently been unable to pay the correspondingly heavy instalments.
However, it is worth remembering that such assurances were given at the launch of the UTS too, but all the promises made by the officials proved hollow. Even before the UTS started facing financial and administrative problems, commuters had been complaining of violation by UTS bus drivers — the failure to stop at designated stops, open doors on moving buses and over-crowding, amongst many others.
As a result, transporters remain ambivalent about the new plan to import CNG buses and have demanded that the city government address all apprehensions as well as offer additional incentives such as exemptions in customs and sales taxes. Sources allege that City Nazim Mustafa Kamal is not reviewing past mistakes and fear that history will repeat itself in the new scheme to provide transport to the city’s 18 million people.
