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Monday, July 8, 2013

Pmp Bus Purchase 500 on Installments & 600 on hire: Whose interests will be served?

Dear Sirs,

1. Purchase of buses on installments is outright bad idea and will keep the Pmp crippled for its life.

Pmpml is not in a position to meet the operational expenses incl salaries,diesel/cng etc, it will never have funds to bear the interest and installment burden. Desperately it will attempt to pass on burden to Commuters with repeated bus fare
Hikes. Recent Last 3 fare hikes had reduced ridership by more than 2 lakhs. Further fare hikes to pay instalments and interest will prove to be death nail of Pmp.

Alternative options available:

The cost of 500 buses at Rs 25 lakhs each will be Rs 125 crores. This should be paid by Pmc Rs 75 cr & Pcmc Rs 50 crores. Which is app 2% of PMC & PCMC's annual budget; moreover Guardian Minister & Hon Dy CM Ajitdada Pawar had already directed both corporations to make 2% provision for Pmpml.

The service area for pmpml is PMRD which also include 3 Cantonment Boards-Pune,Kirkee,Dehu Rd, Municipalities-Rajgurunagar,Saswad etc and many villages. The efforts should be made to muster contributions from beneficiary Local Bodies,Zilla Parishad,Cantonment Boards.

The funds should also be contributed by State Govt as being done in TamilNadu,Gujrath etc. Public transport can Only and Only be run Effective,efficient and affordable if Capital cost is contributed by external authorities and only operational costs are born by it.

Hence the buses should never be purchased on installments where it will add the unbearable burden of interest and installments on weak Pmpml.
Buses be Only purchased by down payment by one or more sources as above,at competitive rates design and quality.

2. Buses on Hired basis:

The state of existing hired buses and their service leaves much more to be desired. Every time complaint is brought to the notice of Management, it was justified in pesonal and public meetings that their contracts are expiring,hence being ignored.

Absolutely no maintenance, dilapidated condition, broken seats, missing windows,glasses,bars, misbehaving drivers,rash dangerous driving - 9 fatal accidents in 5 months.

Public complaints forced management to withdraw 54 hired buses few months back and just yesterday NCP youth forced pmp to withdraw 3 hired buses for its bad and dangerous conditions and repair 2 more.

Pmp has no mechanism,capacity,will power to enforce hire contract for Effective efficient service. The officers are hands in glove with contractors.

As such the extension should not be granted to 254 existing hired buses.

3. Considering the experience and state of affairs re hired buses as above the decision of adding 600 buses to the fleet on hired basis is again adding misery and life threatening danger to the lakhs of commuters.

In addition paying 50% extra than existing rate of hired buses ,for proposed  newly hired buses will again add to the losses of Pmpml.

As such we demand that all three proposals be scrapped.

The need of buses should be ascertained on scientific basis. Rout rationalisation Report of ITDP ,targets of CMP etc.must also be followed for this

The system,infrastructure, manpower and planning for optimum utilisation of buses should be in place before procuring additional buses.

In case, after compliance of above,the need of additional buses is established and all essential systems in place; theses buses should be funded by beneficiary local bodies and State Govt. No funds of pmpml be used for this for purchase or for installments/interests etc.

Jugal s rathi       vivek velankar
P M P.   P R A V A S I.   M A N C H
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