THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) continues to cancel duties of drivers and calls off services frequently, particularly on holidays.
Several employees are forced to sit idle as KSRTC prefers to cancel services to cut losses instead of seeking methods to maximise profit by route rationalisation.
On an average around 30 duties of drivers and conductors are cancelled in the city depot (East Fort) on weekends and over a 130 services are called off on in the district every other day.
“A bus running on East Fort-Venjaramoodu route can make a profit of around Rs 12,800 on average working days. So it is logical that this can fetch at least 50 per cent of the said amount during holidays. However, without any rationale, routes are cancelled causing difficulty to the public and drivers sit idle,” says a bus driver.
While a bus consumes around 40 litres of diesel daily, a minibus runs with just 25 litre diesel daily. However with no mini buses, KSRTC does not operate on certain routes during low collection days.
“This helps illegal parallel services to snatch our passengers,” an official said. Even if the daily salary of a conductor and driver is not considered during route cancellations, the loss will be too high as KSRTC has a huge idle workforce. Currently, there are 13 employees to operate one KSRTC bus.
