KARACHI: It appears commuters’ woes in the country’s largest metropolis and undoubtedly its financial capital will not end anytime soon as the chief minister’s latest pledge to bring 36 CNG buses on roads by the end of June has run into snags, like many past promises which failed to see the light of day.

The chief minister who was perhaps alive to the risk of his plan getting stuck against red tape had formed a powerful committee with the top bureaucrat of the province, Chief Secretary Sajjad Salim Hotiana, as its chairman to see the plan through.

But still the chairman and committee members, Commissioner Shoaib Siddiqui and KMC Administrator Rauf Akhtar Farooqui, failed to realise the plan by taking immediate and appropriate measures.

According to the chief minister, the government has spent Rs40 million on its plan to bring back CNG buses on roads after their necessary repairs and reconditioning. The buses had been left abandoned at the KMC bus terminal in Surjani Town and the route on which the buses were supposed to be plying was from Merewether Tower to Quaidabad vis Sharea Faisal.

An official at the transport department said the department had already extended all the facilities it had been asked to the KMC, including the Quaidabad terminal, route of the bus and assurance by the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority for an uninterrupted supply of CNG to the buses.

Informed sources told Dawn that since the buses were to be operated by private parties and a number of entrepreneurs had shown their interest in running it, the committee had perhaps not yet reached a decision on whom to award it.

In the absence of a mass transit system in the country’s largest city, a former capital and economic and industrial hub, people have to commute through ill-maintained and outdated minibuses and buses of the private sector and have to travel often on the vehicles’ rooftops to reach their destinations.

The only alternative mode of transport in Karachi, and very convenient at that, for its over 90 per cent population is Qingqi and auto-rickshaws which are good only for brief travels. They become very high risk for long journeys when they have to make way through speeding four-wheelers. Nevertheless, many have to take that risk to avoid travel on rooftops of minibuses.

According to an official statement, the chief minister presided over a meeting on June 12 which discussed in detail intra-city bus projects, the induction of CNG buses and another fleet of 35 buses in the next two months.

Besides, the chief minister had given good news to Karachiites in his budget speech that the government was working on launching a rapid bus transport project, which would be called Greenline to be plying from Surjani Town to Saddar.

The Greenline is envisaged to be a public-private partnership. Its projected cost is Rs3 billion and is part of the ADP 2014-15 but the project has not been approved so far and the government has set aside for it only Rs59.204 million in the current financial year of 2014-15. It is targeted to be completed in June 2017.

Another transport project, which plans to connect all mega cities with Karachi, is the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Diesel Bus Service Fleet of 100 buses, for which Rs340 million had been allocated but it would get only Rs59.204 million in the next financial year. The project was approved on March 27, 2012, and was targeted to be completed in June 2016.

The government was also negotiating with the Asian Development Bank for financing project for another bus service between Model Colony and Mazar-i-Quaid via university road, said the sources.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2014