Govt can’t begin buying buses as Green Line project is still incomplete, PA told

The Sindh Assembly was informed on Thursday that the provincial government was not in a position to start the process of the procurement of buses for the under-construction Green Line section of the Bus Rapid Transit Service (BRTS) as the federal entity responsible for constructing the project had not yet given any deadline to hand over the completed corridor to it.

Information to this effect came from Minister for Transport and Mass Transit Syed Awais Qadir Shah as he responded to written and verbal queries of lawmakers during the question hour related to the transport department.

The minister told the house that Prime Minister Imran Khan, during a visit to Karachi last year, had offered to purchase buses for the Green Line project to make it operational, but afterwards no follow-up correspondence was made by the federal government.

Leader of Opposition Firdous Shamim Naqvi of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, the ruling political party in the centre, said in the house that phase one of the corridor had been completed and the transport minister should readily give a deadline to purchase buses to make it operational at the earliest.

The minister retorted that a mere announcement that phase one of the Green Line corridor had been completed was not enough, and the opposition leader should make the Karachi Infrastructure Development Company Limited (the federal agency building the corridor) send a formal correspondence to this effect to the Sindh transport department.

“If in case you (the opposition leader) make the KIDCL issue this formal letter now, I’m fully ready to make the announcement here this moment on the floor of the assembly to give a timeline for purchasing the buses to make the Green Line project operational,” Shah said.

He informed the house that the proposed Red Line section of the BRTS would become the first mass transit project in Karachi, which would be operated with an environment-friendly biogas fuel under a hybrid fuel system along with the compressed natural gas.

He said that approval for the PC-1 of the proposed Red Line section project had been pending with the Central Development Working Party (CDWP) of the Federal Ministry of Planning, Development & Reform.

The minister said further progress on the Red Line mass transit project in the city could not be made until and unless its feasibility was approved by the CDWP. He again sought the assistance of opposition legislators belonging to the PTI to get the PC-1 of the Red Line bus project approved by tge CDWP so that the Sindh government could arrange loans and complete other formalities to construct the project.

He stated that the Pakistan Railways had not been cooperating at all with the Sindh government to give right-of-way to construct and revive the Karachi Circular Railway project as in this regard help of the federal government was urgently required. “The Pakistan Railway is ready to disturb neither its main railway line nor its trunk lines in the city, so in such a position the land cannot be made available to the Karachi Urban Transport Corporation to construct the KCR. In such a situation, it is now feasible that the federal government should better come here and construct the KCR project,” he said.

He also informed the house that the provincial transport department would shortly revise the route permit fee for commercial motor vehicles operating in the province as the last time revision of this fee had taken place in the year 2000.