KARACHI, Nov 26: The provincial transport department has increased the fares of the long route inter-city bus service instead of reducing them, the Supreme Council of All-Pakistan Transporters claimed on Monday.

The council’s spokesman, Akhtar Saeed Khan, said they had made it clear to the provincial government that they would neither increase nor decrease the fares of the public transport plying on the inter-city routes but the government had issued notification stating that in view of reduction in the prices of POL products, notified by the oil companies’ advisory committee, the Sindh government made partial modification in its notification of Aug 4, 2001, to pass on the benefit to the public.

The spokesman said the government, through a notification issued on Nov 23, had fixed the fares at 66 paisas per km for air-conditioned coaches plying on the inter-city routes.

He said the distance between Karachi and Hyderabad is 175km, which suggested that the fare should be Rs115 instead of the existing Rs80. According to the notification, the fare from Karachi to Peshawar was increased to Rs924 from Rs600. Similarly, from Rs250 to Rs462 for Karachi-Quetta, from Rs550 to 891 for Karachi-Lahore, from Rs600 to Rs924 for Karachi-Islamabad and from Rs700 to Rs1,083 for Karachi-Swat have been stretched.

“If we follow the fare structure in accordance with the recently issued notification, the people have to pay 37 per cent to 45 per cent more fare to travel,” he maintained.

HE SAID: “we are charging less fares than what the government has fixed. The government had increased twice the fares during the past three years but the transport operators had rejected the increase in the interest of the people. He expressed the opinion that the notification was issued under a conspiracy to create differences between the people and the transport operators.