Pakistan

PTDC set to launch bus service today

Bus terminal for the tour to be inaugurated at Super Market

Our Correspondent January 10, 2018

PTDC plans to run tour busses Islamabad like these double-deckers in Lahore. PHOTO: FILE

RAWALPINDI: After months of talk and facing delays, the PTDC has finalised arrangements to launch its city-wide bus tour services in the capital on Wednesday (today).

The Islamabad City Tour Bus Service is expected to be inaugurated by Punjab Governor Malik Rafiq Rajwana.

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Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) Managing Director Chaudhry Abdul Ghafoor visited different parts of the main office to review arrangements for the service. Directions were issued to general manager, audit and tourist information centres, Flashman Hotel general manager and others for ensuring that arrangements were complete while security is strict. PTDC Media Manager Mukhtar Ali said that the police band will perform national songs and tunes during the opening ceremony. Moreover, the entire PTDC office and Flashman Hotel have been decorated with small national flags, banners and colourful buntings.

Giving details of the programme, Ali said that tour buses will take scores of students from different educational institutions on a recreational trip around the city, including to the national monument and the Faisal Mosque. The bus will be followed by a long convoy of vehicles.

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The PTDC official said that fares for the tour buses would be appropriate and affordable. Apart from revving up the tour, the PTDC managing director will also inaugurate a bus terminal for the tour at Super Market.

PTDC has been promising the bus service since last year. It was first planned to have been inaugurated on September 27, on World Tourism Day. Then, the PTDC had said that nine buses would start off from Lok Virsa, go around the city before culminating the tour at Faisal Mosque.

The PTDC had also planned to run double-decker tourist buses in the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi with a tour route featuring the Faisal Mosque, the zoo, Rawal Lake, Sector F-9 Park, Lok Virsa, Children Park as well as Ayub Park in Rawalpindi and the Taxila Museum on weekends.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2018.