After the fuel price increase, TN state transport corporations lose Rs 9 crore every day
Posted on: 22/May/2018 9:31:26 AM
Recently fuel prices were hiked and this grabbed many eyeballs and was spoken by many. The latest news is State Transport Corporations or STC in TN are highly suffering because of the hike in fuel rates and it is said that daily losses have crossed Rs 9 crore now. Shocking isn’t it!!
According to an official belonging to the transport department, the corporations are now forced to bear the additional burden of Rs 1 crore per day due to the government temporarily scrapping the diesel subsidy. There are certain routes where daily ticket collection is not up to the mark and below par. The corporation has started to cut down services along these routes to compensate the losses.
As per some sources of state transport department, in 2000 routes the operations are stopped fully and in 4000 routes the operations have been altered. Along 21000 routes as many as 9000 buses were operated and this was until the last year. Daily loss of Rs 8 crore was experienced by the state transport corporations. The prices of the tickets were hiked to overcome this daily loss is known.
Finding bus travel more costly nearly 30 lakh passengers shifted to other modes of transport. Later many protests by the transport department workers led to hike in the pay of workers and this was according to the High Court directions. Recent increase in fuel rates took many by surprise and resulted in more problems to the state transport. It is worthy to mention that out of total operational cost, diesel contributed 28 % and government was bearing 80% of amount that was spent for this component.
After the hike in bus fares the government stopped this subsidy and it created more issues for the corporations. There are as many as 8 transport corporations in TN and on the whole they consume 20 lakh litres of diesel. Now it has reduced to 17- 18 lakh litres of diesel due to reductions in the services. To reintroduce the subsidy component, the confederation of transport worker’s union’s has urged the government. An official belonging to the transport department spoke about how there is no much proposal.
