KARACHI, July 3: The use of donkey-carts, once mainly confined to Lyari and some other old city areas, is now becoming more visible in other parts of the city, thanks to soaring fuel prices.

Many small vendors of vegetables, fresh fruits and such other items who until recently had been using Suzuki vans to sell their goods in the city are now using donkey-carts to move from one place to the other. The donkey-carts laden with fruits and vegetables is no more an unusual sight even in some posh areas and the localities dominated by upper class.

A vender selling mangoes on his donkey-cart on University Road, when asked about the reason for the switchover, said that using donkey-cart was easy and economical as compared to a mechanized vehicle. He pointed out that feeding the donkey would cost less than Rs50 per day while fuel for a van would cost many times higher.

Interestingly, not only the fruit and vegetable vendors have switched over to this discarded means of transportation, but those trading in brick-blocks, pre-cast roofs and concrete slabs, grain, furniture, catering and decoration and many other such things have also been using donkey-carts from transportation purposes.

It has observed over the past few months that many people are hiring donkey-carts for transporting their household items while shifting from one residence to the other. Most of them appeared to be tenants who cannot afford the increased transportation charges being claimed by the operators of mechanized vehicles.

Unlike in the past, one may notice heavy household appliances like washing machine, fridge, deep freezer, furniture, etc. being transported in donkey-carts. They could be destined for a newly-hired/purchased house or a repair shop.

In the old city localities, mainly those in Lyari, Malir, etc., use of donkey-cart for transportation purposes is regarded to be cheaper than Suzuki and truck.

Ironically, the return of donkey-cart to this metropolis is generally regarded as a sign of declining economy and growing poverty as this reflects people’s diminishing purchasing power.

The towns and villages of the interior Sindh, where according to the provincial finance minister “one out of two persons lives below the poverty line”, the use of donkey-cart is abnormally high. One can see more donkey-carts on the roads and streets of Larkana, Jacobabad, Shikarpur Ratodero and other such places than the mechanized vehicles.

The growing use of donkey-carts in Karachi might raise eyebrows of some economists and social scientists, but environmentalists perhaps would take it as a positive trend because this could effect a reduction in the pollution created by gases and carbon mono-oxide emitted by fuel-run vehicles.–-PPI