The 30 buses procured by the State Urban Transport Trust (SUTT) for Sundargarh district will soon ply on roads in the district.
The Sundargarh district administration had earlier issued agreement cancellation notice to Sampark after the firm had closed city bus services of 10 buses after 22 days of running them citing operational difficulties.
According to sources, to implement the State –sponsored urban transport scheme through private partnership, the SUTT had been formed of which Sundargarh Collector Bhupinder Singh Punia was made the chairman and Rourkela ADM K Sudarshan Chakravorty was the CEO. Sampark had been selected to become the private partner of
SUTT through a bidding process and accordingly it had deposited `15 lakh as caution money.
Services of 10 new sophisticated and environment friendly buses commenced on November 9 from Rourkela on the Birmitrapur, Rajgangpur and Bisra routes to cover 35 km in three directions.
Subsequently, the SUTT brought 20 more buses to run on the road which had been agreed by Sampark while signing the agreement for a period of seven years.
After operating the 10 new buses for about 20 from November 8 2015, Sampark stopped the services from December 1 citing operational difficulties. The employees also went on stir demanding payment as per Government pay scale and other facilities. After a meeting of SUTT on December 20, Sampark had been served a noticed of agreement cancellation but on request of Sampark representative, the SUTT had agreed to give one week’s time to set things right.
The SUTT had also warned Sampark that if the latter failed to meet the terms of agreement, its caution money would be forfeited and the SUTT would go for retendering to resume bus services in the district. Since Sampark had not been able to run city buses, Rourkela Bus Owners Association had shown the interest to run 30 city buses as sub contractor of Sampark.
But recently Sampark again decided to continue the bus city services and took the charge of 30 city buses from the SUTT. The road permit and other formalities are in process now and the city bus services to Rajgangpur, Birmitrapiur, Gurundia, Badadalki, Fertiliser, Chhend, Jhirpani, Jareikela, Nuagaon and Purunapani would commence very soon.
“We are now making permit and other paper formalities of these buses, which will be completed very soon and thereafter we would resume bus services of these 30 buses,” said Sampark chief managing partner MK Mohanty.
“Sampark has sorted out all its difficulties and will resume city bus services of all 30 buses in district very soon,” maintained Sundargarh Collector and SUTT chairman Poonia.