Overloading in public transport goes unchecked

RAWALPINDI: Overloading of public transport is going unchecked in twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, posing threats to the lives of commuters specially students.

"It is very risky practice and can cause fatal accidents on the busy highways" a local road safety campaigner Muhammad Ilyas said.

He said that mostly students commute on the rooftop of the buses due to lukewarm attitude of Islamabad Traffic Police, adding that despite deployment of ITP official on differnt roads of Islamabad ,overloading and traveling of students on rooftop continued.

When contacted, some of the private schools management said that it was difficult for them to provide transport facility to all the students of their respective colleges and schools.

They said that this is responsibility of parents to manage transport as most of the students come to Federal Capital from suburbs.

"We have no choice but to depend on local transport of the city, but transporters do not allow us to commute in the vans and buses so they travel to the rooftop, even we know that this is a very risky practice when we erecall the recent fatal accidents onmotorway and other roads."

Meanwhile the commuters are not happy with the public transport system in the twin cities and want better services.

Saeed Ahmed, an employee, said if the authorities concerned can provide quality services like starting AC buses on major routes, a lot of people using private vehicles will switch to using public transport. This will solve a lot of other related problems.

Residents of twin cities said authorities concerned needed to take action against the overloading of the buses.

It may be mentioned here that Capital Development Authority has claimed to ply CNG buses in federal capital but the project has yet to be started. Several attempts were made to contact SSP Traffic Islamabad, Dr Moeen Masood to know his version about the overloading, but his mobile phone went unattended. (APP)