Sindh govt to launch 1,000 new buses in Karachi

Initially, buses will run on 40 routes and soon the service will be extended to other cities

KARACHI: The Government of Sindh has signed an agreement with Daewoo, a Korean transport company, to launch a new bus service in Karachi.

The project was announced by the Sindh Transport Minister Syed Awais Qadir Shah, during a press conference on Saturday. He said that the Government of Sindh and the Daewoo bus service Managing Director  Shehryar Chishti have signed a contract to launch a project under which 1,000 buses will be introduced in Karachi.

Initially, buses under the new project will run on 40 routes, each 10 to 15 kilometres long, in Karachi and soon the project will be extended to other cities in the province, he added.

It has been decided that initially 60 buses will be introduced in the metropolis in 60 days, during the first phase of the project. After two months, another 200 will be added to the fleet, in the second phase of the project.

Speaking about the utility of the new bus service, Chishti said that all the buses running under this project will be air conditioned.

Adding to it, minister Shah said that all buses under this project will run on CNG but will not stop running despite CNG outages.

The government of Sindh has taken the transporters and other stakeholders into confidence regarding the initiation of the project and it will not harm anyone, said the transport minister, adding that it should negate that Pakistan Peoples Party has abandoned Karachi because it doesn't get elected from the city.

Past Promises

PPP has to its credit a long list of promises for bus services in Karachi during different tenures of its governments in Sindh.

The transport minister had recently announced the launch of a bus service in February this year, during a question-answer session of the Sindh Assembly. During the session, he sought quotations from interested investors for a bus service consisting of 200 buses covering 10 routes in Karachi.

Previously, in 2017, Chief Minister (CM) Murad Ali Shah had also approved a plan to introduce 600 intercity buses in Karachi, as a part of the Sindh Government's five-year loan programme through the Sindh Modarabad Management Limited. The Sindh government had announced to facilitate transporters in generating funds for new buses.

In the following year, another ten buses were introduced in the city, under the Peoples Bus Service project, launched by the then transport minister Nasir Hussain Shah. Buses run under this project were also owned and operated by Daewoo. This project was shut down just after a year in April 2019.

Other Transit Projects

Transport minister Shah also answered questions about other transit projects during the press conference.

While responding to a question about the Green Line project, Shah said that he doesn't see the project getting completed till 2020. He further said that the Government of Sindh is ready to work together with the Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rasheed to remove the encroachments from Karachi Circular Railway's tracks and is only waiting for the no-objection certificate to be issued by the federal minister. 

Published in The Express Tribune, May 12^th, 2019.