‘Rebuild Karachi’ initiative: PEF takes stakeholders onboard
Public-private partnership termed only way forward; city needs to be interlinked through six corridors

Under its ‘Rebuild Karachi’ initiative, Pakistan Engineers Forum (PEF) Karachi took stakeholders of the city’s transport sector onboard at a conference entitled ‘Transport and Mass Transit in Karachi – Challenges and Solutions’.
The moot was held at COTHM, Karachi, and was presided over by Jamaat e Islami Karachi deputy chief Dr Usama Razi. Karachi Transport Ittehad Chairman Irshad Bukhari, Ex-Secretary Transport Sindh Dr Tahir Soomro, and others expressed their views at the discussion.
Dr Usama Razi said the prevailing ruling regime in the province could not resolve prolonged issues being faced by the masses. He said that the megalopolis has become a city of problems and the gravity of these issues demands a public service-centric model of politics in Karachi. He urged the masses to take part in collective efforts to resolve the issues or at least play their due role by highlighting them.
Former Sindh Transport Secretary Dr Tahir Soomro said the city is facing the massive issue of traffic because the past governments ignored the mass transit project introduced by the late Naimatullah Khan, former city mayor.
“Even today the mass transit system is the only solution to resolve the transport issues in Karachi. The entire city needs to be interlinked through six corridors under the mass transit project”.
Irshad Bukhari said that in the year 2010, some 20 to 22 thousand buses, coaches, and minibusses were running on the roads of Karachi, but now the situation has become much worse.
He added that the only way forward for the transport sector in Karachi was a public-private partnership. Investors and the public sectors will have to come forward for any progress and betterment in the transport sector of Karachi.
Bukhari recalled that a driving school in Karachi used to issue a permit for bus driving after a month-long training. “The MQM played a significant role in ruining the transport in the city”. — PR