No new private bus service in city: Minister

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: KSRTC buses will continue to rule the roads in the capital city. The State Government has no plans to allow any more private buses in the city, Transport Minister V S Sivakumar told the Assembly on Thursday. He was replying to a question by MLAs M Chandran, B D Devassy, V Sivankutty and R Selvaraj. The KSRTC is presently operating adequate services in the city, the minister said. "The KSRTC has arranged its services in an adequate manner, without causing inconvenience to  passengers. In the capital city alone, the KSRTC plies 522 schedules from the Thiruvananthapuram City, Pappanamcode, Peroorkada, Vikas Bhavan and Vellanad depots. In addition to this, 119 AC/non-AC services are operated under the JNNURM scheme. Besides, KSRTC operates several services from the 16 depots across the district to the capital city,’’ the minister said.Earlier, ‘parallel services’ operated by private parties had given headaches to the KSRTC, but with the State Government putting its foot down hard on unauthorised services, the KSRTC has been able to reduce its losses, the minister said. During 2007, when the ‘parallel service’ menace was at its worst, the KSRTC recorded daily losses of up to Rs 35 lakh. But now, with the entry of unauthorised services to the city controlled, the losses have come down to Rs 20- Rs 25 lakh. The minister said stringent measures are in place to check ‘parallel services.’ At present, KSRTC operates adequate services in the outskirts of the city.  The Motor Vehicles Department is taking strong action against operators running parallel services, including the slapping of fines. 18 assistant motor vehicle inspectors have been posted at six points in the district to control parallel services, the minister said. It appears that Kerala will have to wait some more to travel on KSRTC buses using CNG as fuel. Replying to a question, Sivakumar said that the plan was under consideration, but no talks were held with any agency abroad regarding this. At present, the transport utility spends Rs 560 crore on diesel.  The advent of CNG will bring this down by Rs 252 crore, 45 percent.  However, this can properly be assessed at the current prices when CNG is made available in Kerala by 2012-2013, he said.