Labourers trying to leave Karachi face dilemma as Sindh bans intercity transport

A perturbed Muhammad Fayaz is sitting in a waiting area of the Adil Shah Transport Service at Sohrab Goth. The facility is teeming with passengers Thursday noon. All he needs is a bus to leave for home.

Toying with his face mask, he anxiously looks at his luggage and prays that he gets a bus to leave the port city of Karachi. Fayaz hails from Muzaffargarh, Punjab, and works in a towel factory in Karachi. All of his three brothers have already left the metropolis in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

“It was just yesterday that I got clearance from my factory to leave,” he says. The 28-year-old factory worker lives in a one-room apartment in New Karachi along with his cousins and brothers. In a sad voice, he shares how the factory owners cleared all his dues and asked him to return when the virus is contained.

“We have already returned the keys of our apartment to the owner. My entire family is there, I simply cannot stay here alone. I just need a bus to leave for home,” he pleads.

The Sindh government’s transport department issued a formal notification on Wednesday to shut down the inter-city public transport service in the province for 15 days, starting from Thursday, as part of the precautionary steps to slow down the transmission of the coronavirus in the province. However, the provincial government faced difficulty in enforcing the order to ensure a precautionary measure as the federally-run motorway police refused to comply.

The decision to this effect reached in a meeting of a task force on the coronavirus pandemic, chaired by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Tuesday. The ban is not on the transport goods related to the essential items, such as eatables and drugs.

More passengers

Fayaz is not only passenger who wants to leave for home on Thursday. Another passenger who is equally disturbed in the waiting area is forty-nine-year old Nadeem Ullah, who has his sister’s marriage in Azad Kashmir later this month. With two teeming bags, he’s thinking of a way to leave the megalopolis at a reasonable cost.

“Trains are also being suspended,” his friend Arshad, who came to drop him at Sohrab Goth, tells him quietly.

One more passenger, Muhammad Tassawur, is adamant that he will leave for his home town in Punjab. “Things aren’t good here,” he says with a mask on his face. “In a crisis like this, one should be near their family.” Tassawur lives in Neelam Colony and works in a garment factory. Since, he says, he has made his mind to leave the city, he won’t change his decision. “Come what may, I will go back. A coach is expected to leave by 4:30, and I will board it.”

Six transporters arrested

Six intercity transporters were arrested on Thursday for departing the metropolitan city in spite of clear instructions for closure of the intercity transport rolled out by the Sindh government. Speaking to The News, secretary provincial transport authority Asad Khokhar said they made their best efforts not to let even a single intercity bus leave Karachi.

“Whosoever left the city, we not only stopped them, but lodged FIRs against them,” he said, adding that at Sindh-Balochistan border they had curtailed 99 per cent of the movement of the intercity buses.

“All the bus depots of intercity transporters,” he shared, “have been shut down throughout the city.” Starting from a bus station in Garden, then at Lucky Star and lastly at Sohrab Goth, the transport authority’s secretary said they made sure that no bus station operates. Meanwhile, instructions have been laid out to all the regional transport secretaries to keep an eye on motorways and highways in the provinces in their respective jurisdictions to ensure there are no violations.

The provincial transport secretaries of other provinces have also been informed about the ban and it is being made sure that no intercity transport made its way to the metropolis.

Discord with motorway police

There’s an apparent disharmony between the federal and the provincial government in the enforcement of this ban. Khokhar shared the motorway police had refused to help in curtailing the movement on the intercity transport in the province.

The transport department, he said, did not have the capacity to completely ban the movement of the intercity transport in the province, “for which purpose we need their assistance”. “They have clearly said that until they aren’t given instruction from Islamabad, they would not help the provincial transport authority,” he said.

Meanwhile, the motorway police spokesperson told The News that they operated under the Federal Ministry of Communication and until they did not release any order of curtailing the movement of the intercity bus operation, they would not do it.