Pickpockets on the metro bus

People often break routine on the first day of the new year. I decided to do the same. On the first day of the year, I decided to patronise the public transport system in Lahore. I got ready to go to work via the metro bus. As soon as I entered one of the metro bus stations, I realised there was no queue to get on-board. You just have to become enmeshed in the crowd trying to board the metro. The pushes you receive from the people behind you are enough to enable you to board the bus.

As soon as I entered the bus and managed to find a seat, I realised my wallet was gone. Besides money, it had my CNIC, as well as press, office, ATM and debit cards. So basically it contained all forms of official identification. In panic, I got off the bus and immediately informed the Metro Bus Authority officials at the station of the loss, who opined that it would be impossible to track down the pickpocket. Later, they took my contact details and said they will let me know if the pickpocket throws away my cards at any station.

I was told that incidents of pick-pocketing in the metro bus have increased in recent days and that the authority has started running audio messages in the bus warning people to beware of pickpockets. “The conditions at the first and last stop of the metro bus are particularly challenging. There are many people getting in and out of the station and they don’t form a queue,” the officials said.

If the Punjab government can spend billions on fixing elevators, escalators, and computerised entrance gates at the metro stations, why can't it ensure the formation of queues at metro bus stations? Discipline is something we desperately lack as a nation. If you can spend billions on building a road and starting a bus service, but cannot even organise the formation of a queue, what’s the point of offering public services?

Elderly persons, women, children and the weak suffer in the absence of a queue. As a nation, we may have forgotten how to form queues, but projects like the metro bus can be a good place to start learning to do this. This is my suggestion for the new year and I hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 3^rd, 2016.