The wheels on the bus

Karachi is home to over 20 million people. More than half of them rely on different forms of public transport to travel from point A to point B every day.

In the absence of a properly managed and sustainable transport system, much of Karachi’s workforce relies on the badly damaged buses and illegal 12-seater rickshaws to commute. These people, who collectively turn the wheels of the country’s economy, have been forced to suffer the incompetency of the government and civic agencies that have not been able to provide a solution to the city’s transport woes.



They climb onto bus rooftops, cling onto doorways and cram into lop-sided Qingqis just to reach their destination. What is worse is that the poorest live the furthest away from their workplaces. The Express Tribune takes a sneak-peak at the lives of these citizens, who suffer the ordeal daily, oblivious to the fact that theirs is a plight engineered by those they voted in power. These people are just grateful not to have to walk the whole way.



Published in The Express Tribune, August 1^st, 2014.