KARACHI, Nov 12: The city government will introduce a new monitoring mechanism shortly to check violation of traffic rules and regulations by the Urban Transport Scheme operators.

A number of options are under consideration to give the plan a final shape, an official of the city government said, but declined to describe the nature of these options.

He said that the step was being taken in view of complaints about violation of rules and regulations laid down in specifications of the UTS operators. The official said that the monitoring mechanism was expected to be implemented soon after its finalization.

According to him, the UTS operators have been indulging in traffic rules violations. Over 200 new large size buses are being plied on different routes under the UTS umbrella and the number is expected to rise to 500 by the end of this year.

As per complaints, these buses are violating rules by lifting and dropping passengers at non-designated stops, and by covering the whole body of buses with advertisements. Besides, fare lists are also not displayed in many of the buses being plied under the UTS.

The city government had earlier introduced vigilance teams comprising traffic police and transport department personnel to check the violations by UTS operators. However, this initiative ended in a failure due to non-cooperative attitude of traffic police.

The city government official expressed hope that UTS operations would be streamlined and violations would be contained once this new mechanism was implemented. -PPI