The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in lockdown, confined the fleet of buses belonging to the AP State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) to the depots, inflicting a revenue loss of ₹2,603 crore from March 22 to December 28, said the corporation’s Vice-Chairman and Managing Director M.T. Krishna Babu on Wednesday.
At a press conference, Mr. Krishna Babu said, due to COVID, the RTC had lost 78.84-crore km of operations. He said the department was trying to coordinate with its Telangana counterpart to increase inter-State operations from 1,60,999 km to 2,08,856 km.
As per the MoU entered into with the TSRTC post lockdown, the APSRTC limited its operations to 1,60,999 km by plying 638 buses in Telangana. It withdrew 372 buses. The buses withdrawn from the Telangana routes had been redeployed on routes within the State, augmenting the inter-district operations.
Mr. Krishna Babu said, during the lockdown period, the RTC had transported 3,07,058 migrant workers and other people from the State stranded in other States by arranging 11,802 buses. During the pandemic period, services of RTC drivers and conductors were utilised by the Police, Revenue and Medical and Health departments as volunteers to prevent the spread of the virus.
Intra-State bus operations were started on May 21, and, subsequently, inter-State services were restored to Karnataka from June 17, to Odisha from September 29, to Telangana from November 2 and Tamil Nadu from November 25.
As many as 5,586 employees of the corporation had contracted the virus and, of them, 5,383 recovered and 5,235 of them had joined duty. He said 112 employees were undergoing treatment while 91 employees died. The corporation employees contributed their one-day salary for payment of ₹5 lakh to the kin of each of the deceased employee.
Cargo business
The corporation realised a revenue of ₹42 crore on cargo business from March to December this year against ₹52 crore the previous year, incurring a loss of ₹10.31 crore due to the pandemic.
Mr. Krishna Babu said tenders would be called soon for integrated development of four bus stations at Maddilapalem (Visakhapatnam), Autonagar (Vijayawada), Tirupati (Chittoor) and Raj Vihar Bus Stand (Kurnool).
Executive Director (Administration) A. Koteswara Rao, Executive Director (Operations) K. S. Brahmananda Redy, Vijayawada Executive Director G. Venkateswara Rao, Financial Adviser N.V. Raghav Reddy, Chief Manager (Personnel) Swaroopanand Reddy, Vijayawada Regional Manager Nagendra Prasad and others were present.