By By Atif Nadeem
Diesel shortage has adversely affected public transportation services, with a significant reduction in service duration at night, provided by the local operators as the provincial government fails to ensure fuel supply to these operators.
As long queues of vehicles at different filling stations in the city tell the tales of the on-going fuel crisis across the country, commuters are really feeling miserable when they have to wait for hours to get on a public transport vehicle in intense cold weather.
While talking to The News, office-bearers of the Urban Transport Association admitted that, they have issued directives to all the crew of the public transport vehicles that plied different city routes that they should stop services after 10 pm due to shortage of fuel.
They said that in routine, services continued even after 2 am. They said that the government had not helped the operators to ensure continuity in the services.
They said that they had to visit different filling stations in the city to get fuel tanks filled for their buses and it was really a very painstaking exercise for them. They said that they had talked over the diesel supply issue with the officials of Transport Department but they did not provide any assistance to get out of the present crisis.
While talking to The News, most commuters expressed their dissatisfaction over lack of coordination between the transport operators and the provincial government regarding the issue of fuel supply for the public transport.
They were of the view that the provincial government should had its fuel reservoir in case of emergency especially at a time when there was shortage of diesel in the country so that the low-income commuters, who were the main beneficiaries of public transport system, could not be left in the lurch when they pinned their hope on tall claims of good governance made by the government.
While giving vent to their anger over the issue, they said that the government had become so much insensitive to the plight of the people that no immediate action was taken to prevent diesel crisis when it knew that any negligence in this regard would had adverse an impact on the lives of the public.
They said that they were really facing immense transport problems, especially when they left for their offices in the morning and they usually got late, because many operators had cut number of their vehicles, which plied different roads as they failed to provide diesel for their buses. They complained that the provincial Transport Department should also help the operators so that continuous transport services to the public could be ensured. They said that it had become impossible to find any public transport vehicles after 10 pm, as they had to wait for hours to reach their destinations when fog engulfed the city scene besides spine-chilling cold breeze, which really added to the troubles of the people. They argued that the present government was a democratic elected government and it should strive hard to provide better facilities to the people without any compromise over disruption of fuel supply for the public sector.
They said that the people were really frustrated over amount of fares being charged from them by the local operators despite the fact that oil prices nosedived in the international market. They urged the government to evolve a comprehensive strategy to tackle such situation in the future so that the people could not suffer every time.
While talking to The News, the officials of the Transport Department said that they were aware of the plight of the public and the problems of the operators as well.
They said that energy crisis had engulfed the whole country and the situation was coming back to normalcy.