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Journalism of Courage
PATIALA, July 21: The Pepsu Road Transport Corporation (PRTC) has decided to hire private buses to run on PRTC routes. These buses may hit the roads within about a month’s time. The buses and drivers would be provided by private parties while conductors would be from the PRTC. Most of these buses would run in the districts of Patiala, Sangrur, Faridkot, Mansa and Bathinda.
In an exclusive interview with ENS here today, managing director of the PRTC, B. Vikram, said that this was being done to ease the shortage of buses in view of the limited number of buses in the PRTC fleet since the Punjab Government was not granting any financial help to the corporation and it was already running losses. The PRTC has a sanctioned strength of 1,075 buses while it has a fleet of only 1,048 buses at present. A large number of buses in the existing fleet are overage and need to be replaced immediately. The PRTC has plans to replace about 200 buses made in its own body fabrication cell in the near future.
Vikram said that private parties would be paid per km rate for the hired buses. These parties besides providing drivers for the buses would also be responsible for the maintenance, providing diesel, oil and lubricants for the running of the buses engaged by the PRTC.
The PRTC managing director said that a team of senior PRTC officials had been sent to Uttar Pradesh where the transport corporation was already running about 800 hired buses on its routes. The team had reported that the experiment in that state had been quite successful and had also added to the revenue of the corporation.
After calling tenders for the hiring of buses from private parties, they would be given a period of three months for arranging for funds or raising loans for the purchase of buses. Initially the PRTC plans to hire about 50 to 100 buses, Vikram said. One of the important objectives of the new scheme was aimed at providing better service to the people and to generate additional revenue for the corporation. The corporation at present was not running buses on certain permitted routes because of shortage of buses and drivers though it was paying Special Road Tax (SRT) for these routes. The money going waste by way of SRT would now be utilised, Vikram said.
Vikram said that in view of the shortage of drivers, the corporation had taken 100 drivers on a contractual basis from the Punjab State Ex-servicemen Corporation. These drivers who would be on contract for an initial period of six months, would be paid Rs. 3,000 per month. The money would be paid by the PRTC to PESCO which would disburse it amongst the drivers. These drivers would be under the administrative control of the PRTC through PESCO, Vikram informed.
The PRTC has at present, a sanctioned strength of 1,545 drivers while it has on its rolls only about 1,370 drivers. The remaining posts are lying vacant. No recruitment to these posts have been made so far. The drivers on contract from PESCO are likely to help PRTC to utilise the routes that have not been utilised by the corporation, though it was paying SRT for these routes, Vikram said. It is also being mooted in the PRTC that it should surrender certain uneconomical routes to save on SRT.
The PRTC has also decided to appoint private booking agents for issuing tickets at bus stands. These agents have been selected from amongst the dependents of the deceased PRTC employees with a view to providing gainful employment to them.
The corporation has identified a total of 306 such dependents, out of which 65 were shortlisted to be given private booking agencies on PRTC bus stands. Of these 15 are already being imparted training by the corporation.
These three measures B. Vikram claimed would help solve the problem of shortage of buses, operational staff and provide gainful employment to the dependents of the deceased PRTC employees.
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