Transport dept lacks funds to launch bus projects, PA told

The Sindh Assembly was informed on Wednesday that the provincial transport department lacked funds to launch bus projects on its own for providing mass transportation facilities to the people of major urban centres of the province, including Karachi.

Speaking during the question hour of the assembly’s session, Sindh Transport Minister Syed Awais Qadir Shah said a project of new public buses had been initiated in Larkana city and similar projects would also be launched in other cities of the province as well.

The minister conceded that the issue of mass transportation in Karachi was a serious one as the Sindh government had been trying to bring new buses for the city. He explained that as the transport department lacked funds to run bus projects in the city on its own, it had signed a contract with a private company for the purpose.

The private company, he said, would bring 50 to 100 new public buses to the city by the end of September this year. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf legislator Khurrum Sher Zaman said the Pakistan Peoples Party had been able to run just 10 new buses in Karachi during its previous 10-year rule in the province and even those 10 new buses were currently not operating in the city. He added that instead of conceding its failures, the provincial government had been in the habit of making a joke of it.

Responding to Zaman, Shah said he had already admitted in the house that his department lacked funds. He added that this department should not be unduly criticised and many lawmakers had been supporting it in its efforts to complete various transport projects.

To a question, the transport minister informed the House that the department had not gone for any recruitment during the last one year. Opposition lawmaker of the Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA) Nusrat Seher Abbasi remarked that it was a possibility that the incumbent transport minister would be deprived of his portfolio before he was able to complete the projects started by him.