Millions of commuters in Karachi have been facing a nightmarish situation as the provincial transport department has failed to make alternate arrangements for commuting after the ban on plying of Qingqis which previously had been serving hundreds of thousands of the city commuters.
Office-goers, students, elderly people and women have been suffering gravely as they could not board overcrowded minibuses that are making a windfall after the ban on Qingqis. Sadly, these minibuses are seen with commuters sitting on their rooftops, which is a grave violation of traffic rules and contempt of the directives of the Supreme Court of Pakistan regarding removal of minibus roof racks.
Kainat, a student of Gulshan e IqbalCollege, said they used to commute easily in Qingqis for a fare of Rs 10 per trip. They did not have to wait at bus stops for long and Qingqis also offer them a seat. Now, after ban on Qingqis, they have to wait for hours for a minibus and hardly find any minibus which is not filled up to their footboards. Male commuters occupy female compartments and female commuters have to hire costly rickshaws or taxis.
It is the responsibility of the provincial government of Sindh to arrange alternative public transport for Karachi commuters after the ban on Chingchis, said Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) leader Muhammad Yunus Barai. He said the government should immediately grant route permits to buses in the city so as to meet the acute shortage of public transport. He said the buses that used to run on upcountry routes were plying on Saddar-Korangi route and such buses should be brought to other busy roads of Karachi.
Pasban-e-Pakistan President Altaf Shakoor said the Chingchi rickshaws could be regularised on selected routes till the provincial transport department arranged alternative public transport for the Karachiites. He said Chingchi rickshaws had already been running in Punjab, KPK, Balochistan and Sindh. He said the ban on Chingchi rickshaws had created immense problems for the citizens and Pasban was consulting with its legal team to knock the door of court to seek some relief for the commuters of Karachi till the provincial transport department arranges alternate public transport.
Shakoor said the federal and Sindh governments were befooling Karachiites on the issue of KCR revival. He said for the last one decade they had been hearing about plans to revive local train system in Karachi. He said running local trains was not a rocket science and this task could be done within weeks but the rulers were not sincere to give Karachiites a respectable public transport system. He said local trains were backbone of urban transport system everywhere in the world.
He suggested regularising Chingchis after improving their design, safety features, vehicle registration, temporary route permits, and training of their drivers after properly licensing them, till the government or private transporters were able to bring hundreds of thousands of buses to cater the public transport needs of Karachi.