KARACHI, March 17: A 15-day ultimatum, starting March 3, against the traffic law breakers is to lapse on Tuesday (March 18), only because it could not be executed after being issued for no valid reason.
The ultimatum was part of an order signed by the District Coordination Officer (DCO) under which four committees had been set up to ensure its execution. However, neither the committees started their work nor the ultimatum could be conveyed to the defiant transport operators.
Keeping in view the growing number of complaints about poor performance of public transport facilities, the District Coordination Officer has now constituted a high-level committees to enforce regulations and improve functioning of public transports.
The Secretary, District Regional Transport Authority (DRTA) had issued an order, along with certain instructions, directing the public transport operators of urban routes to follow the instructions. They were given 15 days (March 3-18) to demonstrate obedience or face action.
Among the enlisted instructions were removal of pressure horns and tape recorders from vehicles and display (on back of the vehicle) of the name and telephone number of the operator, vehicle’s registration number, route number and police helpline number (915).
The transport operators had also been directed to observe the ban on token system.
To ensure the enforcement of the order, four committees headed by the SSPs of East, West, South and Central (traffic), had been formed with officers of Transport and Communication Department (TCD), Revenue Department and the DRTA as their members.
According to an official of the TCD, these committees are empowered to conduct raids and snap-checking. The raiding teams would also ensure that the vehicle crew possessed valid documents and male passengers were not entering into female compartment during journey.
The committees had been asked to submit their progress report directly to the DCO. The token system was banned following hectic efforts to convince the major transport operators in the city that it was the root-cause of accidents, in many cases fatal. However, there are reports that some defiant transport operators are still observing the token system.
According to an operator of the minibus route number W-11, the token system has been made applicable on this route from 9am to 5pm (working days only).
The authorities seem helpless in intervening into such internal adjustments.
Token system is an understanding between route operators and vehicle owners and aimed at avoiding a conflict of timings between every two vehicles. Its negative fallout is that drivers have to observe given timings and they usually ignore prescribed traffic rules and regulations besides human values.
After the involvement of the City Nazim, Naimatullah Khan, and later by the provincial Minister for Transport, Adil Siddiqui, the major transport operators’ association have agreed to do away with the token system.
They have succeeded in enforcing the ban to a great extent but the defiant operators are still out to neutralize the positive effects of the ban.—PPI