Transport Minister Champai Soren on Friday asked officials to work on expansion of rural bus services and stressed on the need for revenue generation in a bid to fill the Government’s “empty” coffers. Chairing his first review meeting since taking charge as the Minister for the Transport Department, Soren directed officials to increase the number of applications for driving licences and vehicle registrations, which he said would contribute to the revenue collected by the department.
“The main focus of the Department is to provide better transport facilities and find ways to increase the revenue generated by the transport department,” said Soren, adding that the department, under his leadership, will strive to make necessary changes for betterment of the public.
Transport Secretary K Ravi Kumar said that one of the main agenda for the meeting was to improve transportation facilities in rural Jharkhand and generate more revenue.
“We will come up with ways to expand the rural bus services. The connectivity of Gramin Bus Seva will increase and it will touch new areas,” he said.
“We will also encourage new applications for driving licences and registration of vehicles,” he added.
The Former Raghubar Das-led Government launched the Gramin Bus Seva – a State-run service to connect villages with cities and towns – in 2016 with an aim to make transportation easier in the far flung villages of the tribal State. The Government had marked 23 routes on which it planned to run the bus service. However, the services could not sustain the lack of takers for running the buses, sources said.
While the Government counted the project as an achievement, it failed to find dedicated agencies that were interested in running the buses.
Soon after taking charge as minister, Champai Soren had said that he will add 500 new buses in the project to facilitate traveling from villages to cities. He, however, is yet to comment on how the current Government plans to rope in agencies for running the buses. A few months after the launch of the project in 2016, a few officials had said that finding drivers for the buses was a major challenge in rural areas.
Many buses owned by the Government have also been rotting in different garages due to the former Government’s failure in finding agencies to run the buses.