Karachi, the port city of Pakistan, the commercial hub, and the main revenue generator of the country has always seen neglect by its politicians, its parties, and its own citizens. Today, I will talk about how the city’s traffic system is so poor and how the citizens of Karachi suffer.
In older times, people from other cities would be amazed to see the shocking sight of Karachi. Karachi used to be the crown jewel of the county, with perfect tram systems, the Karachi Circular Railway, the high rises, the way traffic moved, and, most importantly, the Karachi beach. Today, when people from other cities visit Karachi, they refrain from leaving their residences as they fear the everlasting traffic jams and its pollution, the tension, and the mini heart attacks they would get while facing the Karachi traffic.
What citizens of Karachi see every day in the name of ‘traffic’ is just utter madness, when someone drives in Karachi, their mindset is that they have to save themselves and their vehicle and at the same time they also have save other drivers on the road. In Karachi’s Saddar area, which is Commercial, embedded with mechanic shops, corporate offices, hospitals, educational institutes, and residences, there is absolute lawlessness, with bikers cutting off cars, busses stopping in the middle of the road to pick up passengers, cars crossing the divider on the road to make a U-turn, it is quite a task to drive in Saddar, not only the driver but the person sitting beside the driver also gets tensed by seeing the traffic and gets mini heart attacks in the form of acid reflux. It is very shocking that in such a big area in terms of traffic movement, there are NO TRAFFIC SIGNALS, but traffic police are deployed there, which are very few, are busy doing challans to fill their quota of challans. They also multi-task, they professionally, and very discreetly shake hands with drivers of small transport vans and take a bribe as they shake hands and pass it on to other cops there, in the same manner.
If we compare to the traffic systems of other countries, it is not that they have more brains or something; it is just that the law there is very strict and its enforcement officers are trained well and they know what they are to do, traffic laws in Sindh are also good but they should be re-visited and serious police reforms are needed on a first priority. The traffic condition also has affected foreign visitors, if there are any, as the visitors on a first glance would pass comments that the law of the jungle would be better from here and that animals are more civilized than us. Karachi’s true glory must be returned to it. Everyone needs to take responsibility and should own the city. Better governance is needed to maintain the city while keeping away from political problems, the local government should be made by the will of the people, so they can work for the betterment of the city and its inhabitants. Picture credits: Dawn, Medium