TSRTC axe dangles over hire buses

Hyderabad: Due to lack of patronage and low occupancy ratio in buses leading to losses, the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) has asked the hire bus owners to withdraw 40 per cent of the buses in depots, particularly in the city. Consequently, now the owners of the buses have approached the RTA authorities for changing their buses into educational institution buses.

According to TSRTC authorities, it has a fleet of over 10,000 buses and there are about 3,300 hire buses in the corporation. However, presently only 2,200 buses are being operated. Corporation has asked the hire bus operators to withdraw their busses as there are no earnings with low occupancy ratio. "The passengers are not travelling unless there is some occasion and, in such cases, it will be better to cut down the number of hire buses so that the corporation can save money," said a senior official.

According to sources, the corporation is due to a tune of Rs 125 crore to the hire bus owners. It is learnt that many hire bus owners have approached the Road and Transport Authority (RTA) office at Uppal and other places for converting the buses into educational institution buses.

"Vehicle owners are supposed to make an application at the RTA offices for change in use and the number of applications has increased in the recent times," said an RTA official.

Trade union leader and former director of APSRTC M Nageswara Rao said that it was the best thing to withdraw the hire buses. "There is an agreement which I have entered with the RTC MD V Dinesh Kumar, which said the management will withdraw hire buses in a phased manner, though there were 2,100 buses then at the time of agreement, there are 3,300 buses now," said Nageswara Rao.