Mundhe fiat falls flat: In 8 days, 1,098 PMPML buses break down

Mundhe remained unavailable for comment despite repeated attempts to contact him

On an average, almost 125 buses owned by the PMPML break down every day.

EIGHT days after Tukaram Mundhe took charge as chairman and managing director of the loss-making Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) amid high expectations, there has been little respite for hapless commuters, who are often forced to get out of the buses and continue their journey under the blazing sun, as the buses continue to break down. Despite Mundhe’s stern directive on March 29, the day he took charge — to reduce the breakdown of buses to zero — over 1,000 PMPML buses have broken down in the last eight days.

On an average, almost 125 buses owned by the PMPML break down every day in different parts of the city. On an average, 140 buses owned by private contractors break down daily. In Mundhe’s eight-day tenure till April 5, as many as 1,098 buses owned by the PMPML broke down. Between March 21 and 28, right before Mundhe joined, as many as 1,133 buses had broken down in eight days. In fact, the day he joined, as many as 167 PMPML buses broke down, the highest figure of his eight-day tenure. Mundhe embarked on his PMPML innings by taking action against “late-comers” and those found sleeping on duty. His actions drew wide publicity from the media and praise from commuters.

While applauding his effort to discipline the staff, commuters’ organisations said Mundhe should focus on getting more buses on the roads, so that commuters don’t have such a tough time. “Mundhe has done the right thing by wasting no time in acting against lazy staff. He should also target those responsible for the breakdown of buses,” said Jugal Rathi, convener of the PMP Pravasi Manch.

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Prashant Inamdar, of Pedestrians First, said,”The number of buses on the road are only 60 per cent of the total fleet. It should actually be 80 per cent. Mundhe should set a monthly target to achieve 80 per cent fleet utilisation”. Inamdar said one of the major causes of the breakdown of buses was the use of duplicate or sub-standard spare parts. “It has come to light several times in the past that spare parts used for PMPML buses are either of sub-standard quality or not authentic. Mundhe should get to the bottom of this problem,” he said.

Rathi said about five or six years ago, when 1,300 buses were plying on Pune roads, nearly 13 lakh commuters travelled on PMPML buses every day. “Now, even with 1,200 buses on the roads, the number of commuters has gone down to 10 lakh… there is a nexus between contractors and officials which needs to be busted…,” he said.

While Mundhe remained unavailable for comment despite repeated attempts to contact him, PMPML chief engineer Sunil Burse confirmed that Mundhe had issued directives to bring down the figure of breakdown of buses to zero. “His directives were issued on the day he joined,” said Burse. A top PMPML official said it was too early to form a judgement about Mundhe’s performance.. “He has taken some steps and the results will take time to show,” said the official.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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