VIJAYAWADA: The claim of APSRTC management that journey in their buses is synonymous to safety came crashing down as the lapses in maintenance of the buses got exposed following the recent incident of a metro express bus running amok killing three persons and injuring seven in Vijayawada. According to the information available with RTC officials, the Vijayawada branch of the corporation operates a fleet of 478 city buses including sub-urban and metro express services in 115 routes under the city suburb limits. As many as 2,16,137 passengers commute everyday through the city buses and the corporation earns `42 lakh per day.
The Occupancy Ratio (OR) stands at 60 per cent. “On several occasions, representations have been submitted to the management seeking to deploy enough staff to attend bus maintenance. No measures have been taken by the officials. At least now, the officials should take up the issue seriously and deploy enough maintenance staff to avoid such mishaps in future,” said a senior RTC employee on condition of anonymity. He also added that the corporation has more than 60 per cent buses which are in an abominable state. Paucity of funds is acting as a deterrent for the corporation to purchase new buses and add to the fleet,” he informed.
Unions take a dig at management
The unions in APSRTC blame that the corporation has collected around `430 crore since 2014 from the commuters by charging `2 on each ticket as passenger cess and `1 as safety cess.
‘’The corporation has been collecting safety and passenger cess from passengers but has utterly failed in improving the basic amenities at the bus depots. A detailed report will be submitted to the State Government seeking it to bear the burden rather than collecting cess from passengers,” said APSRTC EU senior leader.
Contradictory to the statements, the higher officials in APSRTC said that passenger and safety cess collected is utilised in providing compensation to the families of the victim if a bus meets with an accident.
RTC officials conduct surprise check in Governorpet-2 bus depotAPSRTC officials, Krishna district conducted surprise checks on Saturday and inspected the condition of metro buses operated in the city. According to APSRTC officials, around 300 metro bus services are operated to various parts of the city and its suburbs. As part of the checks, officials found 15 metro buses in poor condition and directed the Governorpet depot manager to stall their operations.
However, APSRTC unions blame that a majority of the buses are in poor condition and there is an urgent need to replace them with new ones. They also claimed that officials have turned a deaf ear to the repeated pleas of the unions. They demanded the regional authorities to take responsibility for the recent bus mishap and evolve measures to avoid recurrence of such incidents.