One of the plans to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) through initiating women’s bus service at Ranchi University (RU) for those students residing in the interior areas has now got bogged down in documentation reframing.
The bus service which was expected to start from November 2017 is now stuck in primarily documentation tasks procedure after facing deadlock in roping in competent bus operators.
Earlier, in a meeting with RU officials over the delay in starting the bus service, the Department of Higher, Technical and Skill Development officials had asked the RU officials to resolve the issue at their own level.
However, on the request of the university officials, the Department official, later on had sent the proposal for reframing the agreement clauses to its Project Monitoring Unit (PMU) for scrutinizing all the clause points.
So far, neither the university staffs nor the department officials have been able to find a solution of it.
Moreover, whether, the amendment process has begun or not, none of the university officers have any idea.
According to RU CCDC, Girijanath Shahdeo, by far, none of the officials here at RU has been approached by the PMU unit of the Department with any rectified plan for initiating the much needed bus service for females.
Also, the idea that was tabled a few months back to consult all such institutes especially Indian Institute of Management-Ranchi, over knowing their methodology of operating buses has been shelved.
“Despite attempts, there are some technical issues that are posing hurdle in starting the bus operation service for girls. Regardless of sending the documents for rectifying agreement clauses, nothing has been finalized by far as on when the bus service will be started. The department is yet to approach us on this,” said Shahdeo.
Notably, by October 2017, all the respective universities had to submit the details and initiate the service from November 2017; however, none of the bidders had turned up then.
In addition, during a pre-bid meeting with a few bus operators, in spite of several attempts, none of the bidders were convinced and had showed immense dissatisfaction in operating the buses demanding immediate change in the clauses.
According to the clause, the bus operators were supposed to lend 180 days full-time service to the university.
But no bus operators were ready to take up the project for just 180 days considering the loss that will be incurred upon them for the remaining days.
As per the State government order, the dedicated bus service will be used only for ferrying female students and not for any other commercial purpose. Meanwhile, the officials of the State biggest university claimed that it is not just RU which is finding it difficult to start the bus service but other four universities as well are facing the similar stumbling block. When contacted the officials of the department on this issue, none of them were available for comment.