PTA to ensure strict enforcement of Covid SOPs

Transport officials paying surprise visits at bus stands

LAHORE:

Punjab Provincial Transport Authority (PTA) has been taking effective steps to ensure the implementation of Covid-19 related Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in public transport, including bus stations.

Speaking to APP on Sunday, Provincial Transport Authority (PTA) Secretary Naeem Bukhari said, "We are focused on strict enforcement of transport-related anti-coronavirus SOPs of the NCOC. The department had also issued a specific transport regime being implemented in letter and spirit in public transport to contain the coronavirus pandemic.”

Bukhari also urged the passengers and transporters to cooperate with transport authorities and the local administration in their efforts to control coronavirus spread.

Read Shops sealed for flouting Covid SOPs 

In case of non-compliance to NCOC SOPs, he added, the drivers and transport owners were being charged with fines, while passengers not adhering to precautionary measures were also being issued warnings accordingly.

He mentioned that teams of transport department's officials were also paying surprise visits to bus stands to check the SOPs there and compliance report was being forwarded to authorities concerned on daily basis.

"The surveillance teams are regularly visiting the bus terminals and van stands to inspect the SOPs as the provincial transport department is all committed to implement the NCOC decisions and advisories issued time to time to contain coronavirus," Bukhari maintained.

Meanwhile, according to a survey, coronavirus SOPs were still being violated in the public transport as most of the passengers and transport crews were not wearing face masks and there were no facility of hand sanitisers and temperature guns in the inter-city and intra-city public transport vehicles.

Anwar Ali, an employee of a private security company, who uses public transport to reach his office, said, "No one is observing social distancing in the local transport and transporters are just focused on money making by boarding passengers beyond the vehicles' seating capacity.”

 

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2021.