Visakhapatnam: The raids by the Road Transport Authority officials on private buses have left scope for a few private bus operators to mint money by hiking fares as many others have curtailed operations to and from Visakhapatnam.
Following the seizure of over 50 private buses by transport authorities, not more than 15 private buses are running between Visakhapatnam and other cities, currently. Due to the non-availability of buses, there has been a hike of about 15 to 20 per cent in normal fares.
There are five to eight private bus operators in the city and most of them have offices in Vijayawada, Guntur, Chennai and a few other places. In all, they used to run about 100 buses on several routes, particularly on Hyderabad, Tirupati, Chennai and Vijayawada routes.
However, after the bus accident in Mahbubnagar around one month ago that claimed 45 lives, the RTA officials have been conducting raids and seized several buses violating rules.
58 buses have been seized in the last one week by transport authorities in Vizag alone for running as stage carriers, despite having a contract permit from the RTA department. Earlier, they never imposed any restricitons if a contract permit bus was run as a stage carrier, but now they are seizing those buses too.
Deputy Transport Commissioner, Visakhapatnam, M. Prabhuraj Kumar said that they have noticed a sharp decline in the number of private buses operating from the city following the raids.
Meanwhile, passengers are facing problems as the bus operators hiked fares arbitrarily.
Manoj Kumar, a passenger from Hyderabad, said that he couldn’t book a ticket due to fewer services. Moreover, in view of the high fares charged by private operators, he preferred to travel in an RTC bus.
