Karwa installs first smartcard vending machine at Al Ghanim station
By QLReporter •
Mowasalat, in a first step towards selling public transport smartcards electronically, has installed a first-of-its-kind self-service machine at the Al Ghanim Central Bus Station.
The self-service machines, which are quite easy to operate, can dispense cards for values of QR5, QR10 and QR100, reported Qatar Tribune.
While the facility is currently available only for cash transactions, credit and debit card payment is expected to be added soon.
At the moment, the company makes use of more than 300 Ooredoo self-service machines to sell its cards. Plans are afoot to install many more such Karwa kiosks around the country.
The total number of passengers who used Karwa services rose by 19%, from 10.6m in 2015 to 12.7 million last year.
what about top up of cards? does this new machine do that too? the person who wrote the article obviously does not take the bus.
there was already one top up machine at the station (not sure if it still breaks down every now and then) while there are at least 3 locations where you can top up at the station itself. of the 80 recharge service distributors in qatar, i only know of two.
This is exciting news for allbys users
However, Karwa has badly failed at several other places in providing b-a-s-i-c services to the public. The people in the management are possibly not aware of the number of people who use the Karwa transport service.
The toilet facility for males at the bus station is just too small and cramped for the number of visitors it gets especially during the winter season. There are just two toilet rooms inside the cabin with the door of one of them missing. The flush in none of them work. The space inside the portable cabin is so small, there is hardly any privacy at the urinals. Thus the heavy stench inside. I went in just once due to the emergency situation I was in. The stench was killing. Also , while in queue,I noticed some of the urinals were choked. And to my knowledge, there is hardly any toilet facility available at the bus station for female passengers. That is not the end of the story. Has any member of the Karwa management ever visited the seating arrangements for the passengers at the bus station? They are covered with pigeon droppings. It was good to note that recently some additional seats were added at the waiting area. But while the additions were being made, the canopy bars on top should have had small spikes on them to prevent the pigeons from using the bars holding the canopy as a resting spot and dirtying passengers and the seats below. One does not need to be a qualified engineer or a scientist to realize such minor things of great importance.
Adding a facility as a smartcard vending machine may be good idea from the business point of view. Providing basic facilities such clean, bigger toilets which are regularly maintained keeping in view the number of people who need to use them daily along with providing passenger with sitting arrangements which are not splashed all over with pigeon droppings, are equally important from the human point of view.
After all, it's humans who use the Karwa bus service!