LAHORE: Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif has announced seven additional electric buses for Sargodha, according to an official statement issued from the Chief Minister’s Office on Friday following a meeting with members of the Punjab Assembly from the district.
The delegation that called on the chief minister included Provincial Minister Sohaib Ahmad Malik, Mansoor Azam, Mian Sultan Ranjha, Ikram-ul-Haq, Safdar Hussain Sahi, Rana Munawar Hussain, Taimur Ali Khan and Sardar Asim Sher Maken, the statement said.
Alongside the bus announcement, the chief minister directed the lawmakers to closely monitor the Model Village programme, the Suthra Punjab sanitation drive and clean drinking water projects in their constituencies — an instruction that shifts part of the oversight burden onto elected representatives rather than the district bureaucracy alone.
Maryam Nawaz said it gave her immense satisfaction to see people, particularly women and children, travelling comfortably on electric buses, according to the statement.
She said every city, including Sargodha, had been placed on the path of development and that all available resources were being used for public facilitation.
“Equitable and indiscriminate development in every part of Punjab is Nawaz Sharif’s vision,” she added.
The lawmakers told the chief minister that thousands of people were using the electric bus service daily across Bhalwal, Bhera, Sillanwali, University, DHQ, Shahinabad, Kot Momin and Tehsil Sahiwal — the last being Sahiwal tehsil within Sargodha district, not the separate Sahiwal city in southern Punjab.
The spread of those stops is the practical point. They connect outlying tehsils to the district headquarters and to the University of Sargodha, which is the daily commute for students, patients heading to DHQ and workers travelling in from smaller towns.
The service was inaugurated by the chief minister on 19 September 2025. At the launch she said 60 electric buses would operate in Sargodha city, with 105 allocated across the division’s districts including Bhakkar, Mianwali and Khushab. The fare was fixed at Rs20, with free travel for women, students, senior citizens and persons with disabilities. Buses were specified with Wi-Fi, CCTV cameras, charging ports, wheelchair ramps and a separate women’s compartment.
Seven buses is a modest addition against that fleet. Its significance lies in frequency rather than reach — on a network already carrying heavy loads, additional vehicles compress waiting times on existing routes rather than opening new ones.
The MPAs also paid tribute to the chief minister for the establishment of the Nawaz Sharif Institute of Cardiology in Sargodha, which they described as completed in record time and called an unforgettable initiative for the district.
The institute was built adjacent to the district headquarters hospital complex on an 85-kanal site, with the chief minister laying its foundation stone in March 2024. Project documentation from the Infrastructure Development Authority of the Punjab describes a 177-bed cardiac facility comprising 156 general beds, 17 private beds and four VIP suites, with catheterisation laboratories, dedicated operation theatres, CCU and ICU capacity, radiology and a blood bank.
Its intended catchment is the roughly 10 million residents of Sargodha division, who previously travelled to Faisalabad or Lahore for interventional cardiac care. In August this year the institute launched cardiac electrophysiology services and performed its first arrhythmia ablation procedure — a marker that the facility has moved past basic commissioning into specialist work.
The lawmakers briefed the chief minister on public response to the development initiatives, saying the welfare projects launched under her government were being appreciated not only across Pakistan but abroad as well. The meeting also reviewed proposals and recommendations aimed at accelerating the pace of ongoing development schemes.
Sargodha’s service sits within a phased provincial programme under which the Punjab government granted approval for 1,500 electric buses across major cities, with charging infrastructure and a cashless card system planned alongside. Sargodha and Sahiwal were among the earlier districts to receive operational fleets.
Two questions follow the announcement. The first is delivery timeline — Friday’s statement did not specify when the seven buses will enter service or which routes they will be assigned to. The second is charging capacity, since fleet additions in other cities have been paced by the availability of charging stations rather than by the vehicles themselves.
For commuters in Bhalwal, Kot Momin and Sillanwali, the more immediate measure will be simpler; whether the wait at the stop gets shorter.
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