At least 90 percent of drivers are driving vehicles in the city without having valid licenses.
The license statistics showed that only 2,50,000 drivers have valid licenses while as many as 36,41,508 vehicles are registered in the metropolis, said the DIG Traffic Karachi, Dr Amir Ahmed Shaikh on Tuesday.
Talking to PPI, Dr Amir said untrained drivers were causing traffic jams everywhere in the city. It has been observed that majority of the drivers of commercial vehicles including dumpers, trucks, water tankers and minibuses had bogus licenses issued from Fata, Gilgit Baltistan and Waziristan and these sham drivers caused 75 percent of accidents in Karachi.
The DIG said that his department would initiate drive against these ‘killing machines’ and they would be made bound to get proper training of driving. He said he had already written an official letter to the Sindh transport secretary to issue directives to all commercial vehicles to get valid licenses for their drivers from the Karachi license department if they wanted to drive vehicles in the city.
Amir said stern action would be taken against ‘driving schools’ in the city where learner drivers were being taught by untrained instructors who were unable to teach driving skills as per the traffic law. The learner drivers were being charged heavy fees by the driving schools but their training process was very poor which did not meet the requirements, he added.
Surprisingly, more than 90 percent of minibuses and so-called coaches running on Karachi roads are discarded public transport vehicles by Peshawar after the expiry of their useful engine life; however, these old, rusty, smoky and junk-class vehicles were being used as minibuses and “coaches” in Karachi with impunity as the Sindh government had turned the blind eye towards the sensitive issue of engine fitness of public transport vehicles, especially in Karachi.