City District Government Karachi (CDGK) will construct 80 warehouses inside the terminal for Balochistan bound buses located at Yousuf Goth, Baldia Town. According to a press release issued by CDGK on Thursday, these warehouses would be completed within next four months with an estimated cost of Rs 80 million. The project would also include the installation of power generator costing Rs 5million.
This was decided during a meeting held under the chairmanship of City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal and attended by Managing Director KWSB Qutubuddin Shaikh, EDO Transport Iftikhar Qaimkhani, officers of CDGK and Water Board. A delegation of transporters using intercity bus terminal also attended the meeting and gave a detailed briefing about the problems faced by them at the terminal.
They said that nearly 12,000 passengers using this terminal daily while travelling to and from Balochistan. Transporters were facing difficulties due to shortage of warehouses besides problem of water, sewerage and electricity. It was decided that the bus terminal urgently required at least 80 warehouses costing Rs 80 million.
City Government and transporters will construct these warehouses with 50 percent share each in the total expenditures incurred on the project. The City Nazim on the occasion directed EDO Transport to invite tenders for the construction of warehouses on an urgent basis so that construction work at the terminal could start at the earliest and the completed warehouses could be handed over to transporters within next four months.
He said that the future requirement of water at bus terminal had also been assessed and the water supply has been planned to cater the needs of water for the next 20 years. "Today the terminal needs 2.5million gallon water daily while the pipeline laid for this bus terminal would have a capacity of 6million gallon water daily and 90 percent work on it has already been completed," he added.
Nazim Karachi also instructed MD KWSB to take measures for installation of water meters at the bus terminal and the repair of sewerage lines on immediate basis. He also directed EDO Works & Services to urgently install the power generator at the bus terminal so that the electricity problems could be solved.
He said that he would visit this the terminal within a week and expressed hope that many problems currently being faced by transporters would have resolved by then. He said that 50 CNG buses would start plying on the city roads from next month as we have already done all the homework for their induction in the transport system. These buses will not be withdrawn and continue to run on the city routes unlike past when these buses were ceased to operate in the city or were running in other cities.-PR