Karachi restricts entry of heavy vehicles during day amid increasing traffic accidents

KARACHI: To address rapidly increasing traffic congestion and safety issues, the Karachi administration has imposed an absolute ban on heavy transport in consumers’ daytime transit travels for the next two months.

The prohibition on the use of heavy vehicles will begin on April 17, 2025, and will continue until June 16, 2025. The position involves a prohibition for other heavy vehicles, which include dumpers transporting construction materials, operating on the city’s roads between the hours of 6:00 am and 10:00 pm.

The significance of this initiative is to safeguard human life and ensure traffic is moving, according to Karachi Division Commissioner Syed Hassan Naqvi.

Consumers bringing in daily needs of items like water, food, and medical supplies, edible oils, and medical gases are exempt, but they are still encouraged to use the off-peak hours to reflect changes in their deliveries.

The prohibition is present under Section 144 in the Criminal Code Procedure; furthermore, law and traffic enforcement officials can prosecute under Section 188 of the Pakistan Penal Code.

There is also a short announcement on the following precluding provisions on unauthorized vehicles on selected major roads, as per outlined in this notice, such as on Shahrah–e–Faisal and I.I. Chundrigar Road, the provisions ban One-Plus-Two and One-Plus-Four rickshaws, which began on the 15th of April 2025 and is included in a prohibition under a ban until the 14th of June 2025.

The objective is to ensure that the travel of citizens is much safer and ultimately our peaks of peak times are lower and regulated to ensure better outweighs for city mobility.