RAWALPINDI, May 18: Public transport vehicles will observe a 24-hour strike on Monday against the franchise of five routes to a private transport company.
The secretary-general of Wagon and Mini-bus Union, Shabbir Hussain Bangash, and the president of Suzuki Union, Bismillah Khan, told Dawn on Sunday that the strike was aimed at stopping the government from franchising route nos 1, 3, 6, 21, and 24 to a private company.
“As many as 5,000 Suzukis, 800 wagons and 200 buses will participate in the strike which will start from 11pm on Monday and culminate at 12pm the next day,” they said.
They said if the private company became the franchisee of these routes, thousands of people would be deprived of their livelihood as the entire Murree Road would come under its control. Besides, they said majority of the commuters could not afford almost 50 per cent extra fares of the private company buses.
Earlier, route no 7 (Saddar to Kohinoor Mills) had been franchised to the same private company. The commuters travelling on this route had to face many problems due to limited number of buses, the union leaders said.
They said under the agreement, signed by both the government and private company, 115 buses should ply on route no 7. But, there are only 32 buses available to the commuters.
As a result, they said, the commuters had to hire taxis, that operated from one point to the other similar to the Suzuki system. These taxi drivers charged Rs10 per commuter compared to Rs4 charged by public transport vehicles that plied on the same route before the franchise.
The union leaders said people had expressed their concern over the non-availability of public transport vehicles after 9pm due to which commuters had to hire cabs to reach their destination by paying higher fares.
They said they demanded of the government to first conduct a survey of the already franchised routes and ask the commuters whether they had benefited from the move or not.
A REPORTER FROM ISLAMABAD ADDS: Public transporters said they paid Rs30 million annually as tax to the government, whereas the private transport company did not pay a penny.
“If we are not allowed to operate then we will not allow any other transporter to ply in the twin cities,” they said.
Transporters of Rawalpindi and Islamabad have threatened to block all roads. If the government failed to cancel the franchise system, they would observe a complete wheel jam all over the Punjab.
These were the views of speakers in a representative meeting of the transporters of Rawalpindi and Islamabad on Sunday. The meeting was presided over by Haji Akhtar Awan of United Transport Committee.