Nagpur: Bus service in the city is likely to take a big hit from Thursday. The Nagpur Municipal Corporation’s (NMC) three Red Bus operators have reportedly decided not to ply 350 buses as they were not being paid their dues.
Already, Green Bus operator — Scania Commercial Vehicles India Private Limited — has served a termination notice to take off its 25 ethanol-run buses from the service from August 12 midnight. Civil contractors too have continued their strike for the third consecutive day over non-clearance of their dues since long.
Three Red Bus operators — RK City Bus Operations (Nagpur) Private Ltd, Hansa City Bus Operations (Nagpur) Private Ltd and Travel Time City Bus Operations (Nagpur) Private Ltd — on Tuesday had served notice to municipal commissioner Virendra Singh about their inability to operate buses from August 9.
Neither Singh, city transport manager Shivaji Jagtap nor chairman of city transport committee Bunty Kukde met the operators on Wednesday. No partial payment was released to the operators. Earlier, the civic body would make some payment to ensure against break in operations.
The operators told TOI that this time they are unable to continue the services. “In the past, we alerted the NMC about our plans of not running the buses from a particular day but continued the services. The dues have mounted to around Rs42 crore. We used to pay salaries of drivers and maintenance staff by 5th of every month. This month, we are unable to pay a single penny. There is no money to pay for diesel too. Our cheques for loan instalments and other services are getting dishonoured for want of balance,” they said.
The operators added that NMC did not comply with many terms and conditions of the agreement. “We were to get escrow account in which NMC was supposed to deposit entire revenue coming from the bus operations and financial viability gap funding. We started services from December 2017 but the escrow account is yet to be opened,” they said.
Each operator raises a bill of about Rs3.50 crore per month. Dues of each operator is over Rs14 crore as on date. The NMC has not paid the operators since April. Even, the NMC’s payment to Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS), that is looking after conductors and operations, is not regular. As against monthly payment of Rs90 lakh, NMC owes around Rs2 crore to the DIMTS.
Citing non-payment of dues, lack of escrow account etc, Scania had decided to stop services from August 12. “There is no communication from Scania despite we sent a letter four days ago requesting it to take back the termination notice,” an NMC official said.
Kukde said he requested the operators to continue the services. “NMC should release a part of the payment. Operators have to spend money on services every day. The remaining should be released after getting the GST grant from the state government and securing a bank loan,” he said.
Civil contractors’ sit-in continues
The civil contractors, for the third consecutive day, continued their sit-in protest in front of mayor Nanda Jichkar’s office demanding their dues of around Rs200 crore. As per the contractors, they have also not received refund of Rs100 crore security deposit (SD) and Rs50 crore earnest money deposit (EMD) for years.
