Karachi: As many as 50 hybrid diesel-electric buses will start plying the roads of Karachi from February, 2022 to facilitate daily commuting in the city.
The announcement to this effect was made by Sindh Transport Minister, Syed Awais Qadir Shah, as the provincial government signed an agreement to procure the services of National Radio and Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC) to import, operate, and maintain the hybrid buses.
The NRTC has been assigned the responsibilities to execute the Sindh Intra-District Peoples Bus Service project of the provincial government. The 50 hybrid buses will start their operation on two routes of Karachi in the first phase of the project. In the second phase, 200 buses will start operating on six routes in Karachi and one route of Larkana.
In the later stage, hybrid buses will be brought for the cities of Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Larkana, and Shaheed Benazirabad. The project is likely to generate 3,000 jobs for local people in addition to revenue for the province.
The Transport Minister said bringing buses for public transportation needs of the province was a challenge as a consortium had been established for the purpose involving the NRTC, and Chinese and Turkish companies.
He said officials of the Sindh Transport Department had worked hard to execute the project to ensure the buses would start their operation in a timely manner.
He gave the assurance that unlike in the past, this time there wouldn’t be any delay in launching the new public bus service in Karachi. He said that in the past such projects had been delayed due to unavailability of funds but this time the financial requirement for the bus project had already been met.
He mentioned the Sindh government had reserved Rs8 billion to execute the project as it was a substantial amount to launch the public bus service in Karachi given that the province lacked financial resources to fund such schemes.
NRTC Managing-Director, Brigadier Tawfique Ahmed, said the third-party audit would be conducted for all the payments to be made to execute the bus project.
