NEW DELHI: Theft of diesel and bus conductors making money by charging less than the fare from passengers to allow ticketless travel are some of the reasons which have left the public transport system in financial ruin, road minister Nitin Gadkari said on Friday.
The minister said running buses on clean gas and compulsory use of smart card-based ticketing will help improve the financial health of state transport corporations. “We all know how the transport corporations across cities have been ruined because of huge losses. This can be turned around by converting these buses to use CNG, LNG or bio-CNG. There is no scope for stealing such fuel. Introducing a smart card-based fare collection system in buses will reduce overhead cost and there will be no leakage of revenue,” Gadkari said.
According to the latest report on the financial health of State Road Transport Undertakings (SRTUs) for 2016-17, the cumulative loss of 56 SRTUs was Rs 13,957 crore and it was 24% higher than 2015-16. Only seven SRTUs made profit and these were Andhra Pradesh SRTC, UPSRTC, Kanpur City TSL, Bihar SRTC, PUNBUS of Punjab, Sikkim NT and Odisha SRTC.
