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major cities made travel inconvenient and expensive. According to media
reports, Pakistan Railways incurred a loss of 100 million rupees a month.
Pakistan Railways which had 821 locomotives in 1948 had only 528 now out
of which only 140 were functional. In the year under review, trains routinely
ran hours behind schedule, and some even failed to complete their journeys
due to malfunctioning of locomotives.
Despite billions of rupees in funding support from the state, Pakistan
International Airlines also did not do a lot better, with frequent flight delays and
cancellations. The CNG crisis adversely affected travel within the cities as
shortage of CNG led to taxis, buses, vans and rickshaws running on liquid
fuel and charging exorbitant fares.
Bonded labour
Debt bondage continued in rural Sindh and in the brick kiln industry in
Punjab. The labourers were kept in illegal confinement. Their freedom of
movement was curtailed by armed guards or their families being kept hostage.
Such practices continued in 2012 and the authorities could make no worthwhile
progress in curbing them.
Target killings in Karachi
According to media monitoring by HRCP, 1,725 people were killed in
targeted attacks in Karachi in the first eight months of 2012. These included
227 political activists along with 107 women and 78 children. People leaving
their homes for work remained in constant fear of a sudden outbreak of violence
in Pakistan’s largest city. Turf wars between different gangs and communities
provided a continuous threat to free movement of citizens. Certain parts of
Karachi, dominated by one ethnic group or another, remained no-go areas for
people of other ethnic groups. At the same time, targeted operations by the
They paid for the right to freedom of movement. Karachi, June 18, 2012.
97
State of Human Rights in 2012