Feature: Traffic mess a daily practice for Kabul residents

"God knows when the road is asphalted and when the city gets adequate transport system to move smoothly from one place to another," a Kabul resident Bashir Ahmad told Xinhua on Sunday.

Standing alongside a muddy street in Karta-e-Now locality in the eastern edge of Kabul city and waiting for bus to reach his colleague on time, Ahmad, 19, said that mostly he is late in classroom because of so many traffic jams and lack of proper transport system.

Afghan capital Kabul, a city with some 5 million residents, doesn't have metro or any other subway or transport system to help commuters move from one part of the city to another easily.

The muddy roads, battered and congested streets usually causes traffic mess and traffic jam in the city especially whenever there is rain or snow.

Suffering from traffic jam is a daily practice for Kabul residents, especially in rainy days.

"More than an hour of rain can change parts of Kabul city to lake," Ahmad said jokingly.

He also whispered laughingly that a donkey-cart owner charged 20 Afghanis to take pedestrians from one side of the street to other in Charahi Sarsabzi square, a neighborhood in northern part of Kabul city four days ago because the area was turned to a semi-lake due to rain on Thursday.

Before the factional fighting in Afghan capital Kabul city 30 years ago, electronic buses was part of transport system and used to take the commuters from one part of the city to another round the clock.

Although several roads and streets of Kabul city have been reconstructed in the post-Taliban country with the financial support of international community over the past 14 years, majority of them with poor quality and many others left in doldrums.

Like Ahmad, scores of others including men, women and school children were waiting for bus along the muddy road to reach their working places and offices but hardly to get on.

Few private companies have been providing transport services to Kabul citizens over the past couple of years but they are not enough.

"It is hardly to find bus and even taxi in the evening time even at 08:00 p.m. local time in Kabul to reach home," resident Pir Mohammad, 35, told Xinhua.

The problem of transport service has encouraged private car owners to use their vehicles as mini-cub in the city and reduce the transport problem.

In Kabul city there is no standard bus stop and call taxi system. Another problem, which added to drivers' problem, is security concerns that authorized traffic police do not allow public vehicles to stop in specific places.

"Billions of dollars have been pumped to Afghanistan over the past decade but streets of capital city of Kabul are still in doldrums," another Kabul resident Abdul Qawi, 42, told Xinhua, saying with pessimism "during my remaining life the Kabul streets and transport system won't be modernized". Enditem