ISLAMABAD, March 20 (APP): The Capital Development Authority (CDA) is planning to run 30 buses on Faizabad-Islamabad route for ensuring cheap and respectable travelling facility to commuters shuttling between the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.“The service will soon be launched and a bus stand is being established at Faizabad – the main junction between the twin cities,” a CDA spokesman told APP.He said the authority had short-listed seven companies, out of 12 that submitted their expression of interests for running the service.
He said the entire paper work has already been completed, while final touches are being given to the project, looking into the bids of interested companies.
The civic body has also approved a project to run tourist buses for different recreational places of the Capital including Shakarparian, Rawal Dam, Saidpur Village, Zoo and Faisal Mosque.
Commuters, specially thousands of students studying in the capital’s schools and colleges, male and female employees of private and public sector departments coming from adjoining areas of Islamabad, are facing problems due to shortage of public transport on different routes of the twin cities.
There are also a number of complaints about non-compliance of routes at different sections like Saddar-Islamabad, Rawat-Islamabad Swan-Islamabad Secretariat, Aari Syedan-Islamabad and Sihala-Raja Bazar to mint extra money from passengers, forcing them to pay full fare for incomplete journey.
Umar Khan, a government employee who comes daily from a rural area of the capital situated along the Kahuta road, said he has to change three vans and pay double charges while going back to home from his office just due to non-completion of routes and monopoly of transporters.
He said almost the entire public transport in Rawalpindi and Islamabad was being run on compressed natural gas, while transporters charge the fare according to price of diesel and petrol.
Another commuter, Faisal Shah said there should be an effective mechanism to ensure route-completion and address grievances of commuters.
When contacted, a spokesman of Islamabad Traffic Police said a help-line ‘1915’ had been established to address grievances of commuters where around 150 complaints are lodged daily.
He said personnel of traffic police were deployed at different points to check the tickets issued by traffic managers to every van on start of a new round to ensure completion of routes.
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