The transporters' body has warned to go on strike for an indefinite period starting May 25, if the dues are not cleared. Speaking to The Express Tribune, KTI general secretary Mehmood Afridi said the Karachi Police took charge of their vehicles whenever they wished to block roads for security purposes.
The general secretary recalled a decision from back in 1996 when the police had promised it would pay Rs3,000 for every vehicle they used. "Since 1996, we have not been paid a single penny," he alleged. "They take our vehicles and we get a receipt from the police station that our bus has been used but we are never paid for those vehicles." He added that the police took as many as 15 buses at a time even if only two or three were needed. "They use one vehicle and charge money from us instead to release the other vehicles standing idle at their stations," he said.
According to Afridi, when the traffic police confiscate their vehicles, they do not release it before five days. "Even if we pay the fine and show them the receipt, they charge us extra to release the vehicles," he claimed, adding that the traffic police also detained their drivers under Section 279 of the Pakistan Penal Code for minor traffic offences. "When we approach the police to release our drivers, they charge us Rs1,200."
Afridi was of the opinion that the traffic department and the police were looting the transporters of Karachi. He warned they would go on an indefinite strike if their concerns were not heeded. "Any dialogue with us will be useless unless AIG Ghulam Qadir Thebo himself does not take up the matter."
For his part, traffic DIG Amir Ahmed Shaikh denied the allegations levelled against his department, reasoning that whenever strict action was initiated against transporters for violating traffic rules, they started using such tactics.
A traffic police official, Muhammad Idrees, who is reader to the traffic DIG, explained Section 279 of the Pakistan Penal Code. According to him, an NGO, Rah-e-Rast Trust, had filed a petition in the high court against bus drivers for plying their buses with passengers on the rooftops and ushering passengers inside their vehicles like animals. "They wanted to make it a serious offence," he said. Subsequently, the court had given orders to launch a crackdown against such buses.
Idrees said, however, that the traffic police, keeping in mind the extreme shortage of public transport vehicles in the city, was not taking any action against these drivers for overcrowding. "Neither are we arresting them under Section 279 for the time being," he explained. "And yet, they violate traffic rules and allow passengers to travel on the roofs."
Section 279 of PPC
Section 279 of the Pakistan Penal Code deals with rash driving. According to this section, whoever drives any vehicle, or rides on any public way in a manner so rash or negligent as to endanger human life, or likely to cause hurt or injury to any other person, shall be imprisoned or fined, or both.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 21st, 2015.
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