While the Environment Protection Department (EPD) and the traffic police have launched new penalties for smoke-emitting vehicles, rickshaw drivers appear to have been exempted from the heavier sanctions, The Express Tribune has learnt.
Public transport vehicles used to be fined Rs100 for emitting excessive smoke or making too much noise, but the fine was recently raised to Rs750. The fine for using a pressure horn was raised to Rs1,000 from Rs200. Fines for private cars and motorbikes that cause noise or air pollution have also been raised but only to Rs300 and Rs200, respectively.
EPD inspectors and traffic police started a campaign of checking and fining vehicles at Mozang and Lorry Ada from March 21. So far, said a source in the EPD, 54 vehicles have been fined for being noisy and 74 for emitting smoke. Most of these vehicles were rickshaws.
“Rickshaw drivers are the worst,” said Younas Zahid, deputy director of the EPD. “They never have a filter certification or use good quality Mobil oil. They need harsher restrictions.”
He said the fines had been increased since the old rates had not proved effective in pressuring drivers into getting vehicles repaired. “We kept giving challans to the same people over and over again,” he said. But an EPD official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that they had been instructed recently to stop handing out the harsher penalties to rickshaws because of fears that they would respond with unmanageable protests. The city is currently already in the grip of protests over power outages.
Apart from the heavier fines for noise and air pollution, traffic police have also been handing out stricter penalties for traffic violations. These prompted a protest by motorcycle-rickshaw drivers on March 16.
“There were fears that there would be more protests by the rickshaw drivers’ union. Now we are only issuing fines at the new rates to drivers of buses and vans,” said the EPD official. Baghi Jaan Khan, the president of the Lahore Auto Rickshaw Dealers Union, said that they had not been charging rickshaws the new fines for the last week.
“It was unofficially decided at a meeting last week between the transport secretary and the traffic police to not charge rickshaws the new fines,” he said.
Tariq Zaman, the district officer for the environment, declined to comment.
However, Chief Traffic Officer Sarfraz Falki said that rickshaws were being fined the new rates. “There may be some confusion because Qing Qis are treated as motorcycles and not rickshaws,” he said.
A traffic warden assisting EPD inspectors in giving challans said that it was unfair to increase fines for drivers of public transport vehicles, who were likely to be poor, to much higher levels that motorcycle and car owners.
Muneeb, who drives a two-stroke rickshaw in Gulberg, said the new fines would only be acceptable if the government subsidised the conversion of rickshaws to CNG. He said it was unfair to classify rickshaws with buses and wagons. “It’s the price we pay for being weak,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 31st, 2012.
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