Lockdown: Buses roll out of depots in Telangana ferrying passengers home

HYDERABAD:  A day after Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao announced exemptions from the lockdown, the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) buses at Jubilee Hills Bus Station left for various destinations across the State on Tuesday. Similarly, buses at all the depots across Telangana ferried passengers to their destinations.

With the government making the social distancing norms mandatory for the authorities to operate the buses, the officials did not allow the full complement of passengers in buses, but ran them only with limited number of people after marking several seats as unavailable for journey. This way, a passenger sitting on one seat would have enough distance from his/her fellow passenger.

At the crack of the dawn on Tuesday, the JBS hummed with activity with a number of people, who were stuck in Hyderabad ever since the lockdown was imposed, descending on the station hoping to get a bus to their towns and villages. As the day wore on, the number increased which, in fact, alarmed those who were already there. Fearing that crowding might result in the spread of Covid-19, some of them left the place in a hurry.

There were no officials to control the crowd, which further bothered the passengers. “We came here at 6 am to take a bus to Nizamabad and there has been no information about it since three hours. It is quite distressing for us as so many passengers have been coming and going and a huge crowd has gathered now. There is no one to control them,” said V Murali, a passenger.

With no guidance on how to control the crowds and no markings anywhere to enforce the social distancing norms, no one knew how to bring in a semblance of order for some time. “Since it’s a floating population, if a large group turns up, we can’t manage it,” said a conductor on a Siddipet-bound bus.

Relaxation catches TSRTC off guard

Many could not get a ride to their villages as the number of buses was few and the seats in them were limited. But the fact that the RTC began operations was heart-warming as, if not today, there is always hope for tomorrow.

The exemptions from the lockdown seemed to have taken the officials off guard. They could not prepare the JBS, the only bus station from where the bus services were operated. There were no queue markings, no sanitisation of common touch points and no sanitisers for passengers. The officials seemed to be confused over enforcing the social distancing norms.

They apparently were not aware whether they could run the buses full capacity or not. A few buses with some seats marked as not being available for journey still ran packed, while in a majority of the buses, the norm was enforced strictly. “As per the government mandate, we can run full capacity in terms of seating. However, we will not allow any standing passengers,” said a senior official.