KARACHI: Cut in diesel price fails to benefit commuters
By Our Staff Reporter
KARACHI, Dec 16: The city transport department failed on Sunday to assert its authority to persuade the transporters to cut public transport fares after the oil advisory committee reduced the price of diesel by Rs2 a litre. This is the fourth cut in the prices of petroleum, oil and lubricants in the past two months.
Between Oct 1 and Dec 15 there had been a total cut of Rs6.37 a litre in the price of diesel.
The Karachi Transport Ittehad (KTI) at a meeting with the EDO city transport department on Sunday expressed their inability to cut fares, saying the Sindh Minister of Transport, Dewan Mohammed Yusuf Farooqui, had promised them to form a fare regulatory committee and the minister, they claimed, had told them verbally that “fares would be reduced or increased whenever diesel prices would go up or come down by Rs2.”
Irshad Bokhari, chief of the KTI, said a formula on regulation of fares was agreed, but no paper work had been done. He said the formula should be given legal protection. He said officials of the city transport department told him that the minister of transport had gone off to perform Umrah, and the provincial secretary transport, Raja Mohammed Abbas, had gone to his hometown to celebrate Eid. As the promise was made by the minister, he would be in a position to make further commitments with the transporters.
The KTI chief said a meeting of allied bodies of transporters would be called after Eid holidays to take them into confidence before taking any decision on new fares.
However, the Karachi Transport Federation (KTF) welcomed the reduction in diesel prices and offered to cut transport fares provided the government took the transporters into confidence.
KTF chief Salim Khan Bangash, in a statement, said at present the fares of bus, minibus and coach had been fixed for three stages, but if fares were fixed for 4-5 stages, it would facilitate the commuters.
They said there had been four cuts in diesel prices in the past two months and the credit for which went to the government. They said this reduction in diesel prices should also be reflected in the prices of essential commodities as transport cost too would have been reduced.
The Action Committee for Civic Problems (ACCP) pointed out that there had been four cuts in POL prices in the past two months, and the latest cut alone would give the transporters an additional profit of Rs4.8 million daily. Now the minimum fare for bus be fixed at Rs 2, for minibus at Rs3.50 and for coach at Rs4.
ACCP office-bearers Baseer Naveed, Manzoor Razi and Zahid Farooq and others urged the government to hold talks with representatives of the people, instead of transporters, to fix new reduced fares.
Earlier, the transporters had claimed that if the price of diesel was lowered to Rs15a litre, they would cut fares without any argument.
After three cuts in POL prices, transporters effected a nominal reduction in fares after much dilly-dallying.
