days.
The Sui Southern Gas Company had announced that CNG would be suspended on three alternative days a week as per the gas load management schedule.
But it suspends the CNG supply for another 24 hours with any announcement.
Transporters and civic rights activists said that unannounced extension of closure of CNG stations for more 24 hours have been intensifying the problems of the commuters.
Zahid Farooq, a civic rights activist associated with the Urban Resource Center, believes that the government has badly failed to resolve the transport issue of the city.
“Karachi, a city of more than 20 million people, is an industrial hub and a port city with a larger commuting public than any other city in the country. But the government has largely ignored its transportation system,” he said.
The day when the CNG supply is suspended, many citizens can be seen waiting at bus stops in the city. “Rickshaws and taxis, and even mini-buses plying on LPG gas, charge excessive fares,” Farooq told The News.
However, Afridi said that some individuals charge extra and it was the transporters association’s decision.
The transporters say that bus and mini-buses cannot be converted back to diesel after the CNG conversion.
“Some transporters have been plying their buses using LPG on the CNG suspension days,” said Rab Nawaz Ustad, the owner of the Marwat Coach route.
“Traffic police have been imposing fines on buses and mini-buses for allowing commuters to sit on rooftops but because of the shortage of buses, passengers forcibly climb onto the rooftops despite the drivers and conductors telling them not to do so,” he added.
Prominent urban planners Arif Hasan and Mansoor Raza in their recent report, “Karachi: the transport crises”, termed the days when there was CNG closure as unusual days.
“The unusual days are those when the city closed down because of strike calls or the blocking of roads because of demonstrations, by various political, religious and ethnic parties and groups,” the report said, maintaining that on normal days a combination of bus and rickshaw is used while 48.7 percent commuters do not go to work on unusual days.
Officials in the provincial transport department admitted that the issue was adversely affecting the citizens.
“The issue of CNG suspension is a federal issue and the provincial authorities have nothing to do with it,” said an official.
He said the provincial government had raised the issue with the federal government but the latter’s response was simple - acute shortage of CNG.