Eid travel

Despite the government’s announcement to absorb the additional cost of over Rs260 billion and never allow the transport mafia from taking undue advantage of the Eid rush, transporters are still demanding huge fares that are beyond the reach of the middle and lower middle classes while it is impossible for the lowest class to meet their demands.
Roughly half of the population of the metropolitan city of Karachi belongs to other parts of the country. They mostly comprise people who come in the low income threshold and are in Karachi to earn a livelihood for their families living in other parts of the country. For them to spend Eid with their loved ones has become quite a challenge. They could not even benefit from low food prices despite the fact that fuel prices globally are on average on the downward trajectory. Commodity prices more or less remained the same or even increased but the authorities concerned did not take any notice of the inflationary trend. Is the government there only to pay lip service to people’s problems?
Engr Arsalan Thahim
Karachi