People find it hard to get seats in buses, wagons

[LahoreEstate]

Monday, September 21, 2009
Noor Aftab

Rawalpindi

Thousands of passengers vying to leave for their hometowns to celebrate Eidul Fitr with their near and dear ones faced enormous problems to find seats in the transport vehicles that ran short due to great rush ahead of Eid.

The passengers including women and children carrying bags and other luggage were rushing from one bus stand to another, but most of them were seen perturbed, as transporters were denying on-the-spot booking of seats. But there are many others who despite having advance booking were given flat refusal by transporters.

In more than three incidents at Faizabad Bus Stop passengers simply refused to vacate the seats already reserved for families thus creating a rift and trade of harsh words among all of them who otherwise were in festive mood before that scuffle.

“I contacted booking offices of various transport companies on telephones for reservation of seats in the last couple of days, but no one entertained me. Finally, I bought a ticket by paying double fares, which means that they had seats, but they wanted to mint extra money,” said Rashid Jhang who was heading towards Muzaffarabad.

The insiders told ‘The News’ that many groups of people bought large numbers of bus tickets in connivance with staff members of transport companies many days back with an aim to sell them to the passengers on exorbitant rates.

“I was waiting for a bus when a person came to me and asked me how many tickets did I want. When I asked him that I wanted three tickets he immediately told me that he would provide these tickets if I paid him extra Rs500,” said Yaseen Rao, who was searching for seats in Bahawalpur-bound buses.

Other than small and generally illegal bus and wagon stands in Rawalpindi the passengers were trying their ‘luck’ in four main bus terminals including Pirwadhai, Soan, Karachi Company (G-9) and Faizabad. The situation was almost the same everywhere as the passengers who ‘luckily’ managed to get seats have to pay extra money to win ‘hearts’ of the transporters.

http://thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=199610