EDITORIAL: It almost beggars belief that four busses of the Peshawar Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) service have caught fire since the much-delayed launch of the transit service on August 13. And even though there have fortunately been no casualties there just seems no end to the troubles that this particular initiative keeps running into. Now the whole thing has had to be suspended till a team of technical experts can have a good look at all the busses in operation and get to the bottom of the problem. Surely, four busses of the same service catching fire within a matter of days is no ordinary matter and needs to be looked into thoroughly. It turns out that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) government did order an inquiry after the first fire just days after the launch of the service, but nothing became of it. The provincial government also approached the Chinese company that manufactured the busses, and a team of their experts even visited Peshawar, but again nobody has heard since about what that trip really achieved. Needless to say of course that had the relevant technical staff of Trans Peshawar, the government-owned company responsible for operating the service, acted responsibly, promptly and professionally, there was a good chance that the problem would have been solved before the other busses caught fire, which has led to loss of so much money and credibility.
And somebody should also ask Trans Peshawar just why it initially dismissed the latest fire as a "mere spark, which was immediately put out." If only it had been a little more circumspect it would not have looked so unprofessional immediately afterwards when it announced the suspension of the entire fleet for inspection. Now, while there's no telling how long this inspection will take or even if the fault will be identified, you can be sure that the opposition will take full advantage of this breakdown and not let the government hear the end of it. This project has been dogged by controversy since its inception. It was bad enough that Imran Khan first ridiculed the Punjab metro service then his government introduced a similar idea in Peshawar, but then the date of its inauguration had to be pushed forward almost every time it was announced. It took more time and money to see the light of day than even the more liberal initial estimates, and now that it is out and the provincial government finally has something to show for all its troubles, there is suddenly this rather strange phenomenon of its busses catching fire every now and then with passengers inside them.
Everything about this project raises rather important questions and ought to teach the government how not to do a project. How, for example, is it possible that estimates commissioned by the official government can be so wrong about time and the quantum of investment needed? Who answers for all the overruns in such situations and how are they made up, especially when the service is so bad that you have to pull the plug for safety reasons almost immediately after putting it on the road? What should passengers who relied on the government to make their lives easier make of all this? How, for that matter, would the sitting government have reacted to something like this when it was in the opposition?
The first order of business must no doubt be to solve this problem and make BRT safe for passengers once again. The government must also look very deeply into just why its service delivery system has been so disappointing in this case. It is, after all, just such things that affect the common man the most and can also make the biggest difference at the polls. Nobody needs reminding that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) came to power on promises of change in the interest of the commoner. Yet things like BRT only tell a story of ideas, once looked down upon, now embraced but also very badly bungled. Going forward, instead of trading accusations with other parties as the opposition squeezes this issue for its own point-scoring, the government must concentrate on getting its act together and restoring the trust of people.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020