KARACHI: Commuters of different routes of the city are forced to pay double fare to complete their journey by flying coaches or mini-buses from one terminal to another.
Most of these flying coaches or mini-buses allegedly drop their passengers in the middle of their designated routes and load other passengers of the same route to complete the remaining part of their journey; multiplying their income.
After off-loading, the vehicles are stationed stray for a few minutes till the passengers embark upon other coaches or buses of the same route ready to leave for the last stop. These vehicles also are mostly vacated in the same way for fresh load. The passengers are thus forced to pay new fare to complete their journey.
Among these routes, the vehicles of the Muslim Coach route- - plying from Pakistan Steel Township Gulshan-e-Hadeed in Bin Qasim Town to Keamari- use the same tactics to multiply their income. They break their journey at Quaidabad (Landhi) and some times they do not bother to carry the passengers up to Quaidabad stop.
"A conductor simply orders the passenger to quit the vehicle at Murghi Khana stop which is around one Kilometre behind Quaidabad. We have to walk through traffic up to Quaidabad for another Muslim coach to complete our journey," said a group of passengers of this route.
They said that only from Gulshan-e-Hadeed and the surroundings thousands of people -- students and workers - do travel to the different areas of the city daily.
The Muslim coaches are seen un-affordably over-loaded. Their roof- tops and women compartment are loaded with male passengers as there is no other transport service to carry a large population of commuters, they said.
They urged the concerned authorities to issue permits to other transport services having flying coaches and buses to ensure easy and respectful travelling. With entry of competitors, Muslim coaches operators would have to change their monopolistic attitude as they now allegedly feel free to fleece the passengers and suspend their operations wherever they like, maintained the passengers.
Earlier, till a couple of years back, four other services including Mehran Coach, Karachi Coach, Friends Coach, Urban Transport Service (UTS-8) were successfully operating. The commuters of this route were shocked at closure of these services, the group of people maintained.
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