ISLAMABAD-After the federal government’s failure to evolve a dedicated masstransit authority for Islamabad, the Capital Development Authority has decided to establish its own Islamabad Public Transport Wing to run the operations of metro bus services.  
Earlier, there was a proposal to establish Islamabad Masstransit Authority on the pattern of Punjab Masstransit Authority when both National Highway Authority and CDA were at loggerheads to run the operations of the metro bus service in the federal capital. 
A legislation process was also initiated for the establishment of Islamabad Masstransit Authority, however, it could not be materialized on one pretext or another. 
Resultantly, the operations of the Orange Line Metro Bus Service running between Peshawar Mor to New International Airport in a dedicated corridor were handed over to the CDA by the federal government as stopgap arrangements. 
Meanwhile, two other metros routes; green line and blue line operating between Bhara Kahu to PIMS Hospital and Koral Chowk to PIMS were also launched on the directions of the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and its operations were given to the CDA as well.  The CDA is also in process to get buses and run 13 feeder routes from different corners of the city – linking them with metro bus routes. 
At present, the authority is running such huge operations through a director and a project director with little number of allied staff alone but now while keeping the increasing burden of work, CDA’s Engineering Wing has proposed to establish a dedicated wing headed by a deputy director general for the smooth operations of the metro bus services in future.   
As per the proposal, the wing will have two directors; director operations and director infrastructure development. The operations directorate will have its own field teams while the infrastructure directorate will have two separate civil and electrical divisions. The CDA will recruit a total of 78 officials for this wing on contract basis.   
The CDA board will deliberate upon the said agenda today and take a decision in addition to a large list of other agendas pertaining to the different sections of the civic body.    The board will also consider a proposal to handover the operations of the green line, blue line and feeder routes to a government owned entity most likely to the National Transport Research Centre without going into open competition under section 42-F of the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority rules. 
At present, the bus operations on green and blue lines are being handled temporarily by the Fasial Movers – an operator of the orange line metro bus service as a stopgap arrangement but without following proper procedure.     
Meanwhile, the road authority has also declared two consultants, who were in the run to get a feasibility study to construct mass transit system from Rawat to Faisal Masjid and from Bhara Kahu to PIMS and another feasibility study regarding Infrastructure Development of integrated Public Transport Network in Islamabad as technically unfit for the job and the concerned formation has recommended to give this study to a government owned entity as well to save the time under 42-F of the PPRA rules instead of going into open bidding.