DELHI TRANSPORT CORPORATION IN EXTREMELY BAD SHAPE / facing whopping losses

The deteriorating public transport system DTC has made the lives of the commuters cumbersome and in immense jeopardy with majority of the buses going off the road and routes and the officers literally doing nothing to set right the situation.

The Delhi government of AAP has terribly failed on this front with DTC commuters, majority of them from the lower middle class and the poor strata of the society constrained to either wait for hours at bus stands and then due to non availability of buses miss his or her duties or compelled to pay three / four times extra by travelling in Delhi metro whose fares has been arbitrarily increased manifold despite incessant protests.

It may be recalled that during the previous regime under the Shiela Dikshit government the conditions of Delhi Transport Corporation was extremely good and smooth with thousands of buses on the road in good condition but after the return of the current government the DTC has increased heavy losses and the buses have also gone out of the roads.

Today, Delhi Transport Corporation has merely 3800 buses on Delhi roads with majority of them, permanentally stationed in Depots due to the extremely shortage of Drivers and negligence and complacense of the staff and depot managers. Several buses are out of order and literally decaying. Delhi actually requires11000 buses to cope with the current situation but DTC has merely 3800 buses under operation resulting in extreme shortage and inconvenience to the commuters.

One can easily find buses stationed at Depots and bus stands but they hardly move on routes on time and miss several trips of every route. There is total mis management in DTC with the monopoly of Divers, Conductors and local ATIs who are supportive of each other missing their trips as per their conveniences and hardly caring for the commuters welfare. One can see groups of commuters waiting at bus stands for hours together with little or no hope of getting buses to reach at prescribed destinations.

The staff is equally non cooperative and least caring passing the buck on depot managers for not arranging adequate number of buses in time. It’s the commuter who suffer ultimately. According to the sources the DTC is running in heavy losses of several thousand crores and is increasing further manifold due to the negligent attitude of the staff and officers who either intentionally mis thousands of daily trips daily on various routes or due to congestion of encroachments.

Its because of this negligence on the part of the DTC officials and the Delhi government that lacs of Delhi commuters are badly suffering and the Delhi Metro Corporation on the other hand is exploiting them to the hilt with its increased fares on daily basis. Conclusively, it can be unabiguously said that the Delhi government has failed on DTC front and all complaints sent to them by the commuters have fallen on the deaf years of the DTC officials literally doing nothing to set right the situation.

The Delhi transport minister should seriously look into the grievances of the the Delhi commuters by increasing the DTC fleets on all the routes and minitoring the situation by holding regular meetings and inspections with the officials of the transport department as well as the DTC officials at the decentralised level.

The latest reports indicate that the DTC is suffering the whoping loss of Rs nine crores every month on just because of missing of thousands of trips on daily and monthly basis due to the traffic cobgestion and negligence of the staff due to dereliction of their respective duties.
SUNIL NEGI