[sustran] Karachi's Tongas: Down but not out - fwd

[SUSTRAN Resource Centre]

More from the latest edition of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights'
newsletter, "Housing by People in Asia", No. 12, April 1999, which has
several items on transport issues.

A. Rahman Paul BARTER
SUSTRAN Resource Centre
P.O. Box 11501,  Kuala Lumpur 50748, Malaysia.
Tel/Fax: +60 3 2742590,  E-mail: sustran at po.jaring.my
Web: http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/2853/
The SUSTRAN Resource Centre is a not-for-profit organisation 
that promotes and popularises people-centred, equitable and 
sustainable transport with a focus on Asia and the Pacific.


<picture caption>
On Karachi's 750 kilometres of roadways, you enter into a wild dance with
at least 12 million people, a million motorized vehicles. and every
imaginable kind of non-motorized vehicle - bicycles, rickshaws, carts drawn
by horses, bullocks, mules and men. But 
moving 12 million people around the city is a complicated task and the
informal transport sector is bearing the lion's share.


Karachi's Tongas: Down but not out ... 

For the past few years, the Urban Resource Centre (URC) in Karachi has
plunged into virtually every aspect of the city's transport - researching
existing transport systems, parking, highways, trains, vehicular pollution,
getting out vital information on city transport plans that mean eviction
and mayhem, lobbying against ill-conceived transport ideas and proposing
their own solutions for improvements in the city's transport (many of which
have been adopted!). An astonishing 70% of Karachi's transport needs are
met by the informal sector, and URC continues gathering information about
these immense informal systems which keep Karachi moving - from private
buses, to renegade trucks, right down to push-carts and rickshaws. Here are
a few notes on one of Karachi's oldest, but fastest-disappearing forms of
informal transport - the tonga - drawn from URC reports. 

The tonga, or horse-drawn passenger cart, is one of Pakistan's most
economical and environmentally friendly means of short-distance commuting,
but tongas are rapidly disappearing from Pakistan's cities. The bustling
Lea Market is one of the last places in Karachi were tongas are still
plying, charging only three rupees to carry a person to various parts of
Lyari. 

In Karachi's pre-automobile days, as throughout much of South Asia, when
tongas were the only form of individual, for-hire urban transport, the
streets were filled with the cheerful clip-clop of thousands of tongas. The
carts themselves are still beautifully crafted from wood and iron, gaily
painted with flowers and geometric patterns, and fitted overhead with sun
bonnets. The small horses which draw them wear smart harnesses, fitted with
blinders and ornamental plumes, while the tongawallahs sling sacks of green
grass underneath for fodder breaks. 

But over the years, the Lea Market has become one of the most congested
areas in Karachi, as well as its most busy bus terminus. Almost every
building around the market contains a "godown" (warehouse) or some kind of
storage facilities in its ground floor, and these bring in large numbers of
heavy trucks to load and unload goods, day and night. All these large
vehicles not only cause traffic congestion, air and noise pollution, but
make the streets quite hazardous for tongas. Plus, a large area, which for
a hundred years was the city's official tonga stand, has been given over to
buses and commercial development. 

"Now it is very dangerous to ply a tonga on the city roads," one
tongawallah named Kuchwan reports. "We are unable to compete with fast
moving vehicles. The roads are broken and accidents are common."  The
number of tongas is gradually decreasing. According to Kuchwan, there were
over 400 tongas in the early 80s, but now they number less than 100 around
Lea Market. Despite these facts. a large number of Karachi-wallahs still
prefer travel by the gentle tonga over the more available buses, putting
those few tongawallahs still in business in great demand. One never sees a
tonga waiting for commuters, only commuters waiting for tongas!

Contact: 
Karachi Urban Resource Centre
3/48 Maulimabad Housing Society
off Khalid bin Walid Road
Karachi 74800, PAKISTAN
Tel. +92 21 455 9275, Fax. +92 21 444 288
E-mail:  urc at inet.com.pk