BENGALURU: Armed with photographic evidence and physical assessment of as many as 40 of the 153 bus stations maintained by the Karnataka state road transport corporation (KSRTC), the comptroller and auditor general (CAG) has pulled up the state’s biggest road transport corporation for failure to have hygienic and clean bus stands for commuters.
While the KSRTC has blamed the outsourced companies for being unable to maintain cleanliness, the CAG audit report on public sector units has shown that the corporation has been at fault in selection of the outsourcing firms and overseeing the performance.
As per the performance audit report, the CAG has identified at least 16 of the 40 bus stations inspected by its teams having filthy toilets, 27 bus stands having no provisions for drinking water and 30 stations not having fans for commuters to sit while waiting for the bus. Eight of them did not have proper garbage cleaning facility, leading to a lot of health hazards.
It has also identified that 29 of the 40 bus stands did not have facilities for the disabled and 18 more having no separate toilet facilities with railings for the disabled.
In its response, the corporation said: “The cleaning of the bus stand premises and toilets was evaluated on an hourly basis by the stand-in-charge concerned and penalty was levied on the contractor for the lapse of cleanliness.”
However, the CAG has said that despite this provision, the filth and unhygienic conditions indicated that the contractual provisions were not strictly enforced and monitored by the corporation.
“Further, the fact that it did not even make any norms for these amenities shows its (KSRTC) apathy towards maintenance of cleanliness,” read the report.
The CAG noted that KSRTC did not have a passenger-amenities norm until 2014-15 and yet it was inadequate as it did not include reasonable standards for some of the essential amenities on hygiene and waste management and provisioning drinking water facilities at bus stations.