THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : Shortage of drivers has once-again affected KSRTC operations, especially in busy depots in southern districts. The crisis comes even when the corporation is operating at its lowest fleet capacity owing to the pandemic.
According to an official, several drivers were sent to depots closer to their houses on work arrangement or transfer during the lockdown. “Those drivers have not returned which has led to the shortage,” said an officer. At present, the KSRTC is operating around 2,000 schedules against the approved schedule of 5,300. If this continues, the KSRTC, which is already reeling under huge losses, will fall deeper into debt.To make up for the shortage, the management has sought the help of drivers from across the state who are willing to report for duty in these busy depots.
Volvo bus services are among the worst affected. “We faced a crisis when we decided to operate 10 AC Volvo services within Thiruvananthapuram city. We were left without enough trained drivers to operate it,” said the official. The shortage is acutely felt in depots at Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam and Pathanamthitta.
Though KSRTC has close to 10,000 drivers, most of them belong to the northern districts. In Sultan Bathery, the KSRTC has 180 drivers though it operates only around 60 services. Meanwhile, there are allegations that PSC-recruited drivers use their political influence to get transfer to depots closer to their homes, leading to shortage in other depots.
Assigning back-to-back duties to available drivers despite their fatigue has a direct bearing on the safety of passengers. “We are forced to assign duty to these drivers since we are threatened with disciplinary action for trip cancellation,” said a KSRTC vehicle supervisor. He alleged that he has faced multiple disciplinary action for refusing to assign continuous duty to a fatigued driver.
“I once even wrote in the log book that I could not take responsibility for pushing the driver.” The Sushil Khanna report on modernising KSRTC has mentioned lax resource management leading to trip cancellations. Earlier, the skewed resource deployment was managed with the support of temporary drivers. But they were retrenched following a High Court order. “Under the earlier work arrangement, drivers in northern districts were assigned 75 duties (10 weeks of work). However, the system watered down recently,” said an officer.