Kolkata: In a bid to check bus accidents, the state government and the police have proposed to do away with the commission system in bus services.
The matter was discussed in a meeting held on Tuesday. State Transport minister Suvendu Adhikari, Additional Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay, other concerned officials of the Transport department and senior police officers held the meeting, with representatives of bus owners' associations.
Sources said that the Transport department and the police have proposed to put an end to the commission system. Under the existing system, drivers and conductors get a commission from the fare collected from passengers. As a result, buses of same routes race among themselves to get more passengers, which leads to accidents.
It may be mentioned that doing away with the commission system is an old issue and it crops up whenever there is any major bus accident. The Left Front government had remained indifferent to the issue. Now, the Mamata Banerjee government is trying to put an end to it, by removing the commission system for good.
There are private buses in which there are two conductors. In such cases, the two conductors and the driver of the bus get 24 percent of the total amount of the bus fare they collect in a day.
There are some buses, mainly the mini-buses, in which there is one conductor and a helper. In such cases, the driver gets 14 percent and conductor gets 9 percent of the total fare collected, while Rs 250 is given to the helper per day.
The commission system is in place only in five districts, namely Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly and North and South 24-Parganas. In all other districts, the driver and conductor get salaries at the beginning of every month from bus owners.
Representatives of the bus owners' associations have urged the state Transport department to frame a guideline in this connection.