A precarious perch: Traffic police clamp down on bus carriers

Transporters, rooftop commuters disgruntled

KARACHI:

The city's impound yards wear splashes of colour these days. Intricately decorated carriers, used by passengers to perch precariously atop the city's minibuses and coaches, lie piled up in the 'jails of cars' after the traffic police clamped down on them.

The traffic police department kicked off the crackdown after its 10-day deadline for the removal of the carriers passed on March 1, irking the transporters as well as commuters who often travel on the rooftops of the city's buses.

Talking to The Express Tribune, traffic DIG Amir Sheikh termed the hundreds of commuters loaded upon the buses 'an ugly sight' as he expressed his displeasure towards the transporters for putting passengers on the rooftop.

Transporters, meanwhile, claimed that although they had agreed to comply with Sheikh's orders, they were facing problems by doing so.

According to Zaheer Khan, the manager of the Khan Coach services, the company has 45 buses plying on the roads of Karachi - all of them now free of the rooftop carriers that used to hold passengers. "This has resulted in losses of over Rs400 per day," he lamented. "And even putting that aside, our drivers and conductors are now met with a hail of abuse from the commuters anxious to board the coaches, sometimes leading to scuffles."

In order to address these problems, Khan has had to change the bus schedule - his coaches now leave the bus stand at two minute intervals in the morning instead of the previously fixed five minutes. "The peak hours are from 8am to 11am," he explained. "Sometimes we even have to skip some of the bus stops in order to avoid the flood of passengers trying to board full coaches."

Bemoaning his troubles, Khan said that on the one hand, the traffic police charged transporters for overloading their buses but on the other, commuters abused them for not letting them all on board. He went on to criticise the ever-increasing Qingqi rickshaws in the city. "We used to have 100 coaches in Karachi but now less than half of that are left," he said, demanding that the government introduce incentives for transporters in order to increase the number of buses in the metropolis.

According to Arif Rasheed, the head constable of the South Zone impound yard, almost 40 minibuses and coaches have been impounded and their carriers removed. "On March 3 alone, 12 vehicles were seized."

Meanwhile, South traffic SP Tanveer Odho pledged to continue charging transporters who did not comply with the traffic rules. "We must go by the book; the decreasing number of buses in the city is not our concern," he claimed. "If an accident occurs, we are the ones who will be blamed."

Praising the efforts of the traffic police, Urban Resource Centre director Zahid Farooq said that the Sindh government should take immediate action to improve public transport in Karachi.

"Passengers often find travelling atop the buses safer and more comfortable," he pointed out. "This is only because it is congested inside and the chances of getting mugged are higher." He added that it was the responsibility of the provincial government to introduce better transport facilities for commuters.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2015.