ISLAMABAD: The Capital Development Authority (CDA) has turned down a proposal by the Punjab Metro Bus Authority (PMBA) to jointly operate the metro bus service in the twin cities.

The management of the civic agency declined to sign the contract forwarded to it through the Cabinet Secretariat.

CDA Chairman Maroof Afzal at a recent meeting with the cabinet secretary said the terms and conditions of the agreement were too costly for the civic agency to bear.

Take a look: Just how 'Fit for Purpose' are the Metrobus projects?

Besides, the CDA also said it was the function of the capital territory administration to manage and regulate the transport business.

“The operator of metro buses and other services are private entities and should be treated like private transporters which come under the domain of the capital territory administration.”

Talking to Dawn, a senior official of the CDA planning wing added that the agreements with the service providers had been signed by the PMBA at inflated rates and the CDA was not involved in the negotiations.

“Therefore, the CDA should not be part of the cost sharing,” the official said. “The agreement will completely drain the CDA resources.”

The agreements unilaterally signed by the PMBA with the bus operators stated that the private party would be given Rs325 per kilometre. At the same time, the PMBA has given a guarantee for the minimum 200 kilometres run daily. The contract has been signed for a period of eight years. With 68 buses on the route, their daily bill would be Rs4.42 million.

“But the main issue is that around 60 per cent of the metro bus route is in Islamabad; therefore, the CDA is being asked to pay Rs2.65 million daily to the PMBA for the buses only.”

This is because the metro bus route has 10 kilometres in Rawalpindi and 14 kilometres in the federal capital.

The official said the PMBA was operating the Lahore metro bus with 45 buses despite the fact that Lahore had much higher ridership compared to Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Similarly, the other two contracts for a period of six years have already been signed by the PMBA with the contractors without taking the CDA into confidence.

One of them is for the automated ticketing and bus scheduling system for which the contractor would be paid Rs3.71 million monthly. The third contract related to the surveillance system for the whole project costing Rs1.26 million per month.

The PMBA had offered to the CDA that the income from the tickets sold would be shared at the ratio of 50:50 if the passenger goes between the two cities. The ticket proceeds will completely fall into the CDA kitty if the traveler moves within Islamabad. However, the CDA will get nothing if the rider moves in the limits of Rawalpindi only.

“This is another serious issue for Islamabad as there is hardly any passenger movement after late evening, especially on the route towards the Secretariat,” the CDA official said.

A study conducted by the National Transport Research Centre of the ministry of communications in 2011 said the daily passenger movement from Faizabad to Secretariat was 28,000.

Calculations made by the CDA in response to the PMBA offer showed that if the bus fare was Rs20 per person, the total earnings from the sale of tickets would be between Rs1.2 and Rs1.5 million only.

The agreement drafted by the PMBA has also said all the future agreements with around 12 more contractors, including those providing cleanliness, maintenance service of lifts and escalators, would be made by the PMBA alone.

However, the cost would be shared on the basis of stations and that too would be higher in Islamabad as the federal capital has 14 stations compared to 10 in Rawalpindi.

This is contrary to the impression that the Punjab government will grant an annual subsidy of Rs2 billion to the metro bus service. “This subsidy will be to cover up the price differential between the cost of operating the metro buses and the income from the sale of tickets which is obviously going to be less due to the lower fares,” said Hanif Abbasi, the chairman of the Metro Bus Implementation Committee. On the other hand, Sibtain Fazal Aleem, the managing director PMBA, told Dawn that no such decision had been taken so far.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2015

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