City’s lifeline – the City Bus service–has come to a halt causing a great inconvenience to commuters for whom the service was the cheapest medium to travel in the city. Despite a plethora of reasons offered for suspended service, the transit system seems to have fallen victim to the inter-departmental spat between the owner—Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC)—and the caretaker—Jharkhand Tourism Development Corporation (JTDC).
The JTDC was entrusted with the responsibility of running the buses and as per the order issued in 2010 it had to continue with the responsibility until the system gets stabilized. The tourism corporation managed the services by outsourcing it to Ask Securities that provided drivers to run the buses. However, the board of the tourism corporation decided sticking to the business of promoting tourism in the State and handover the transit service to RMC from September 1.
“In the 41st meeting of the board of JTDC convened in March it was decided that the tourism corporation will handover city buses to RMC and from September 1 it will disassociate itself from the responsibility of managing the city bus service. We had requested RMC to take responsibility but they did not show any interest,” said Managing Director of JTDC, Sunil Kumar.
With the decision of the JTDC and indecision of RMC, 70 city buses have gone off the road and the ball is now in the court of Urban Development department. The agency that has been outsourced the services is likely to meet Secretary Urban Development to seek solution to the problem.
“We are going to meet Secretary today to present our demands and ask him to resolve the issue,” said owner of Ask Securities, Sanjeev Kumar Singh. But the problem seems to be far from over as the agency has made it an issue of non-payment of fuel allowances and is likely to stick to the point in the meeting with Secretary Urban Development.
The agency claims to have approached RMC as well but to no avail. The real issue seems to have buried under the trivial issues of non-payment of allowances and maintenance of city buses.“The issue has been made out of nothing and it has been given the colour of non-payment of allowances whereas the real issue is something else,” claimed the MD, JTDC.Officials of RMC did not respond to repeated calls made to know their position on issues surrounding city bus service.