KU’s new shuttles of no good without registration

After staying in the news for quite some time for alleged misappropriation of funds, Karachi University (KU), one of the largest public-sector institutes in the country, has once again exhibited what can only be as termed poor financial management.

Sources at the university disclose that eight new buses costing Rs100 m were purchased by KU with a special grant worth Rs80 million from the Higher Education Commission several months ago. However, the vehicles have since remained parked at the university’s Husein Ebrahim Jamal (HEJ) Research Institute of Chemistry, gathering dust in absence of registration and insurance, which requires an additional rupees eight million.

Interestingly, while KU appears reluctant to release the funds required to make the buses operational, the university has been keen to disburse upwards of Rs140 million in form of leave encashment to its employees.

As one of the largest public sector universities in the country, KU draws students from every corner of the city, some even commuting from the very fringes of Karachi. This is why it requires a decent fleet of buses to shuttle the students on a daily basis.

However, instead of expanding the fleet, it is learned that Safer, a shuttle company operating within the vast KU campus, has recently stopped its service while much of intra-campus transport has been reliant on merely four shuttle carts operating via NTS Technologies Ltd. Whereas, the 42,000 students who study at KU only have access to a total of 22 buses that operate outside the campus, which means the points are often overcrowded and operate on long-haul routes, even during sweltering summers.

Addressing the newly acquired but inoperative fleet, sources at the university said that KU had received funding worth Rs80 million from the HEC in 2017, during the tenure of the former Vice-Chancellor late Dr Ajmal Khan, for the purchase of ten buses. “The cost of a single bus back then was Rs8.5 million, but instead of immediate purchase, the finance department of the university failed to utilise the money for the intended purpose. In the years to come, as the dollar climbed, the price of the vehicles also shot up. Meanwhile, the transport department of the university was changed and when the new secretary of transport Qadeer Muhammad Ali inquired from the finance department about the purchase of buses, the price of a single bus had gone up from Rs8.5 million to Rs12 million. So, the available funds could only afford eight buses, which are yet to be of any use,” the source revealed.

Per Dr Qadeer Mohammad Ali, the new buses cannot be put on the road without registration, regarding which he says he has spoken to the director of finance and thus expects progress in the case. When inquired about the state of 22 buses currently being used to shuttle students, the secretary of transport revealed that six of them have been entirely out of order, and eight are under the process of being repaired.

He further revealed that with diesel being charged at Rs.143 per litre, fuel costs for the running buses come down to Rs2.6 million per month. However, when diesel used to cost Rs96 per litre, the fuel bills had been running up to as much as 5.6 million per month with the same number of buses. “This is unexplainable and the matter is being referred to the anti-corruption upon investigation,” he told The Express Tribune.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 13^th, 2022.