KARACHI: The compressed natural gas (CNG) buses of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), Green Metro Bus Service, have almost disappeared from the route of Kaimari to Pakistan Steel’s residential area of Gulshan-i-Hadeed via Sharea Faisal.

This has created anger and frustration among a large number of the commuters who mostly travel for their jobs and education.

With the fleet of 35 buses, this service was launched on the very busy and long route about three years ago by the then chief minister of Sindh, Syed Qaim Ali Shah. He had also announced that the number of these buses would be increased soon.

This was very good news for commuters who had suffered a lot because there was only one bus which was private intercity coach, Muslim Coach, on the route. They were happy to get better transport service.

After a few weeks, the government awarded the contract for these buses to a group of influential people.

But within the next few months, the contractors sub-contracted the buses to the divers and conductors.

According to the agreement, for each trip the contractors would get Rs2,200. The drivers and conductors were self-employed and asked to also bear the bill of CNG in addition to payment to contractors.

These drivers and conductors virtually became owners of these government buses.

They started violating all traffic rules and rights of passengers to multiply their daily earnings.

This, all of a sudden, dropped the quality of the service, which included overloading, picking the passengers without designated stops, taking long time to complete journey, and rough behaviour of drivers and conductors with passengers.

The situation worsened as the contractors raised their demand for a trip to Rs3,100, against Rs2,200.

Most of the drivers and conductors refused to run the buses for the reason that they were not earning that much amount and it was not feasible for them to continue.

Of 35 buses, hardly 10 are left on the route, which come after a gap of one hour.

Instead of three trips earlier, now a bus makes only one in a day.

It was thought that after cutting short the trips, a CNG bus would get a good number of passengers and would earn according the wishes of contractors, but the situation was otherwise, conductors told APP.

The commuters on this route find themselves very lucky to get a bus because of long gaps between two buses against the original timing of 10 minutes.

The people from different sections of the society have expressed their concern and anger over the mismanagement of the government buses causing difficulties to the people.

The people want to know the reason for giving on contract the only public-sector bus service in the city.

They urge that the government should operate this service properly.

The bus has a big business as there is a large population linked to this route from Kaimari to Steel Township, Gulshan-i-Hadeed.

Published in Dawn, June 21st, 2017