KOCHI: The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has long been labelled as a “white elephant”, even struggling to pay salaries to its staff. But there is now light at the end of the tunnel as the public entity is finally showing signs of revival. In the last one month, 79 out of the total 93 depots have either recorded operating profit or achieved break-even.
“If we take the figures of the last 30 days, 85% of the depots achieved operating profit or break-even. It’s a laudable effort from the part of the employees and officials. Now, they have been given an overall daily target of Rs 9 crore and efforts in that regard have been started,” Transport Minister K B Ganesh Kumar informed the assembly on Friday.
The Chief Office (KSRTC Headquarters) recently issued strict instructions to all unit heads to come out with ‘feasible’ proposals to achieve a combined daily collection of Rs 9 crore, a 33% rise from the current operational earnings of Rs 6 crore to Rs 7 crore. While the average daily earning has risen from Rs 4.5 crore in 2022 to Rs 6.5 crore now, the daily expenditure hovers around Rs 8.7 crore-mark, that includes pension and salaries.
This means, the corporation has to find an additional Rs 60 crore to Rs 70 crore to stay afloat. Now, it has started clearing the dues as well, albeit with governmental aid from time to time.
“The operating profit doesn’t include factors like pension and salaries. While the dues have accumulated over thousands of crores of rupees, the corporation has cleared dues worth Rs 883 crore to its employees since last December which includes provident fund, pension, NPS arrears and NDR,” Ganesh Kumar said.
KSRTC to boost non-operation income sources
Explaining some of the action taken, the minister said, individual depots have been given the decision-making capacity when it comes to operating new services. “Earlier, if a depot suggests a new viable route, it used to take much time to get the nod from the Chief Office. Now, that has changed. If such a suggestion comes, we’ll allow the particular depot to operate the services for two weeks and then assess the viability. If it’s profitable, then they can continue with the service. This will help the unit offices and the staff there identify good schedules,” he said.
Meanwhile, the corporation has also initiated a slew of measures to increase its non-operation revenue sources.
“Ten new fuel stations are all set to be operational soon. The KSRTC is also planning to expand its courier service by starting doorstep collection and delivery of courier packages to the customers,” Ganesh Kumar said.