KARACHI, July 20: The Karachi Mass Transit Programme, which is the only viable option to rid the city of ever increasing gridlock, has not been implemented over the last two decades despite the huge amount spent on foreign tours of officials studying mass transit programmes.

Insiders say the KMTP failed to make any headway mainly for want of political will on part of the government and the authorities, who failed to make their case whenever it was taken up with the federal government. The project, if implemented, would have provided substantial savings in fuel and relieved traffic congestion, as well as providing clean and efficient transport service.

Conceived in the early 90s, the project was given a conceptual approval by the Pakistan People’s Party government in 1996. The following year an agreement for the project’s implementation costing $600 million was reached between the government and the Indus Mass Transit Company Ltd, a consortium of three companies – the Canada-based SNC-Lavalin International Inc, STFA construction firm of Turkey and a local firm, Adcon Engineering Ltd.

The deal envisaged building and operating the light rail system connecting Merewether Tower to Sohrab Goth.

The project’s finance was pledged by the Islamic Development Bank of Saudi Arabia, the Export Development Corporation of Canada, Japanese Exim Bank, Nisho Iwai, a Japanese multinational company, and the National Development Finance Corporation of Pakistan.

SNC-Lavalin had worked out a financial model to make contributions in Pakistani rupees instead of US dollars due to its foreign exchange constraints.

However, successive governments had no time to look into the causes of delays in the project’s implementation. To the bad luck of the city, the matter could not be pushed beyond the signing of MoUs. As a result, the KMTP still remains a dream for 14 million residents of the metropolis.

When Dr Farooq Sattar was elected as the city’s mayor, he took up the matter and struggled to convince the government to set up a mass transit authority that could be in a position to make a quick decision for implementation of the KMTP.

The PPP government in the centre decided in principle to develop a mass transit system not only in Karachi but also to develop and regulate urban mass transit systems in eight big cities of the country. For this purpose, the National Mass Transit Authority was set up under the chairmanship of Prof N.D. Khan, PPP leader and former federal minister.

However, the project’s fate hung in the balance with the removal of the PPP government in the early 90s.

The PPP government, during its second term, announced a package of Rs121 billion for Karachi with the KMTP as an integral part of the plan. Though the government was dismissed, the newly elected Pakistan Muslim League government did not drop the project. An amount of Rs50 million was earmarked for the KMTP in the Sindh budget for the year 1998-99.

In December, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was supposed to perform the project’s ground-breaking. However, the Nawaz government was overthrown in October 1999 and General Pervez Musharraf took over as the country’s chief executive.

Transport mafia

Promising to provide the city a clean and better transport system, the general did order revival of the circular railway that was suspended after his takeover on Dec 15, 1999. But even orders by the man in uniform failed to revive the circular railway due to the ever increasing influence of the transport mafia, which had earlier made the government pack up the cheap and successful mode of transport in the city, the tramway system.

Now, once again, with the induction of the PPP government in the centre and in Sindh, millions of people expect the elected leaders to pick up the thread from where they left when their government was dismissed. However, before the project could be revived, certain elements in the establishment, who were opposed to the KMTP, became active by raising a controversy about who would exercise the authority over the project.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah had promised, in his post-budget press conference, to revive the light rail project costing Rs2.4 billion to mitigate the miseries of commuters in Karachi. However, good intentions are not enough for executing these projects as political will is required to take hard decisions. In the case of the KMTP, there is a need to remove all snags in its way and put the right person for the job, without which the dream of millions of people may shatter once again.