22,000 plus passengers avail state govt buses, pvt ones stay off the roads

Kolkata: State Transport Department is leaving no stone unturned to ease the woes of office goers amid the ongoing lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19. According to sources, Kolkata based WBTC buses maintained a frequency of 30 minutes on all routes and even 20 minutes on some routes. 22,000 plus passengers including frontline workers and emergency duty personnel avail the Skeleton bus service on Tuesday.

While the West Bengal Transport Corporation is running its buses with 20 passengers at an interval of 20 minutes from different depots to cater a huge number of passengers, the private bus operators have kept their vehicles off the roads demanding fare hike. However, taxis operators have started their services without of increase in fare.

On Saturday, state Transport minister Suvendu Adhikari assured that additional state-run buses will ply from Monday. As per his commitment, the state Transport department has doubled the total number of buses on Monday compared to that of plying since May 13.

Tapan Banerjee, general secretary of Joint Council of Bus Syndicate, said: "We urge the state government to call us for a meeting in connection with the revised bus fare submitted by us to the state Transport department. We have been asked to run buses with only 20 passengers while the total capacity of passengers of a bus is 60."

At present, the minimum bus fare is Rs 7 for three km and the maximum for 50 km is Rs 30. However, the bus operators demanded the minimum bus fare should be Rs 20 and the maximum Rs 90.

More than 300 buses were operated on 13 routes on Tuesday. The WBTC is running its services on 13 routes - S24 between Howrah and Kamalgazi, S12 between Howrah and New Town, S-7 and S-5 between Howrah and Garia, S-12D between Howrah and Thakurpukur, C-26 between Howrah and Baruipur, C-37 between Esplanade and Amtala, S9A between Dunlop and Ballygunge, S9 between Jadavpur and Karunamoyee, C-8 between Joka and Barasat, SD-7 between Ultadanaga

and Salt Lake, s-37 between Barasat and Garia and SD-6 between Tollygunge to Karunamoyee.