THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Former Transport Minister N Sakthan, responding for the first time to charges of corruption and ineptitude during his tenure, said that Mathew T Thomas’ decision to purchase engines at lower cost and build the bodies of buses at KSRTC’s own garages had resulted only in KSRTC incurring losses.
''It was in total violation of the accepted ratio of 2:1 (one Tata bus for two Leyland buses) that the LDF Government decided to purchase large number of Tata engines,’’ Sakthan said while participating in the discussion and voting on demands for grants in the budget for the financial year 2009-10.
And the Tata engine the LDF purchased was not the Cummins engine but the inferior 697 engine, Sakthan said. There was no demand for the 697 engine, he said and added that when the Karnataka State Transport Corporation finally purchased these engines it had led to its undoing.
The LDF might have got a discount of over a lakh but in practical terms the new engine caused losses that were seven times more. The 697 engine, according to Sakthan, required 22 paise more diesel to run a kilometre than the Cummins engine.
This means that when a bus fitted with the 697 engine runs for 15 lakh kilomtres (the maximum life of a bus), in today’s rate, it will entail a loss of Rs 3.46 lakh. ``But if the future cost of fuel is taken into consideration, the loss might cross even Rs 7 lakh,’’ Sakthan said.
Again, he said a bus with 697 engine would have to do engine work after every three lakh kilometres in comparison with every seven lakh kilometres in the case of a bus with Cummins engine. This, Sakthan, said would add an extra Rs two lakh per bus.
The former Transport Minister said he had been facing charges of corruption during the last three years for his decision to hand over the contract of building bus bodies to outside agencies.
He said only 150 bus bodies, that of Ananthapuri and Venad buses, were built in such a manner.
The rest were done in KSRTC’s own garages.
However, he said, the building of bodies outside was cost-effective. ``It cost us Rs 5.10 lakh a bus. Of this, 12 percent were sales tax, which came back to the State Government. So, in effect, the cost was only Rs 4.47 lakh a bus, which was lesser than the Rs 4.50 lakh the LDF had to pay for building the body of a bus,’’ Sakthan said.
The former Transport Minister also said that KSRTC’s losses piled up during the LDF tenure. ``By the time we left in 2005 we had brought down KSRTC’s loss to Rs 104 crore from Rs 131 crore. After the LDF came to power the losses rose to Rs 141 crore and then shot up to Rs 192 crore,’’ Sakthan said citing government documents.
Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan, while replying to the discussion, said the figures Sakthan referred to were not audited and therefore did not merit consideration.