The Point buses, which were started to facilitate university students to travel at nominal fare, are likely to be withdrawn due to unavailability of funds. An official source in varsity told Business Recorder on Monday that, "due to unavailability of funds it seems impossible to carry on with the transportation system for the students of the university".
He said that due to lack of resources and unavailability of funds, the varsity is facing severe hardships. To a query, he said that university management, due to security reasons, has banned entry of private vehicles in the premises of university, which also increases the burden of transport department.
He said that there is a need of drivers and conductors to provide evening students with transport facility but the university can not afford the expenses of wages of extra staff. He said that there are only 26 point buses for 26,000 students of the university out of which only four point buses for 5,000 students of evening program are available, which is insufficient to cater to the needs of students.
He said 2700 non-teaching employees and 7,000 teaching staff is working in this varsity and most of them rely on transport facility due to this the load of work has increased since last few years. He further added that the transport department had submitted recommendations to Director Evening Program Professor Dr Abuzar Wajidi some four months ago to enhance the number of point buses for the students of evening program but all in vain.
He said that the department is running five shuttle buses within the premises of university but to facilitate the students of evening program these buses are not sufficient to cater the needs of 5,000 students of second shift. He said that the transport department is running shuttle service according to schedule, which is provided by the administration of the university but the administration is unable to evolve the schedule of evening program.
He urged that students should also cooperate with transport department by allowing them to increase fares in order to pull the transport department out from crisis. He requested to the members of the civil society and corporate sector to join hands to provide university graduates with transport facility.