CM Kejriwal pulls up DTC on commuter complaints, minister assures remedial measures

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“Transport Minister Gopal Rai, however, told the chief minister that he was talking with DTC officials to sort out these issues,” said a senior official.

The DTC chief also held a meeting with depot managers and issued a set of five directives — including one on “100 per cent out-shedding of buses” — which “have to be adhered to strictly”.

On an average, 92 per cent of the DTC’s buses ply on the streets while the remaining 8 per cent are parked in the depots for maintenance or contingency purposes. The DTC has nearly 4,500 buses.

The directive stated, “After out-shedding of a bus from its respective depot, no driver will return to the depot till his last trip is not completed, unless the bus suffers a breakdown. For the units of time worked over the eight-and-a-half hour long shifts, the driver and staffers will be given adequate rest and the overtime will be recorded in the separate audit report”.

A bus driver who works on the Narela-Bawana route said that traffic snarls often forced buses to make fewer rounds during their shifts.

“We never manage to complete our rounds on the longer routes because of traffic jams. The time lost in traffic eats into our shift timings.

We manage to complete only four of five trips within the eight-and-a-half hours allotted to us. Otherwise, we are supposed to complete nearly six or seven rounds in each shift on long routes; shorter routes have more mandated trips”.

Another directive urged all drivers, conductors and depot staff to report to work on time and record their entries on bio-metric machines in each depot. “Salaries will be calculated as per recordings on the bio-metric systems from January 2016,” it said.

Meanwhile, the Delhi government has announced that 6,000 buses will run for the first two weeks of January, when the odd-even policy will be tried out.