Bathinda, Sep 22: Even as staff of state-run bus firms are protesting against an alleged mafia of the private mini-bus operators in the Bathinda region, finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal has been captured on video calling up the managing director of Pepsu Road Transport Corporation to underline these operators’ “concerns”.
The call on Monday — made on speakerphone at a gathering where a number of mini-bus operators were present — came a week after the police booked a private bus operator for thrashing a bus driver of the PRTC at Rampura Phul near here. The video was shared by sources with HT. In the call to PRTC MD Manjit Singh Narang, Manpreet said the corporation’s general manager at the Bathinda bus stand, Surinder Singh, was “playing a negative role” and that the mini-bus operators were being “harassed”.
“The PRTC union keeps beating up the conductors (of the private operators),” Manpreet said. “Wherever there is a permit, allow them to ply their buses,” he added.
It must be underlined that the PRTC had — after an HT report last month — detected and taken off the roads 40 mini-buses plying illegally, and subsequently entered the local routes, within 25-km radius of the city, with its fleet of 20 buses. This had led to a doubling of revenue in its earnings on the Bhucho and Goniana routes.
As Manpreet batted for the operators in the meeting caught on video, also seen in one of the key private operators, Avtar Singh, who assured the finance minister that all the bus operators present in the meeting were “with the Congress and not with the Akali Dal”.
Manpreet in the call refused to touch the issue of timetable of buses, as per which the PRTC officials have been trying to fix equal durations of taking passengers at the bus stand.
Last week, the local PRTC officials also regulated plying of mini-buses on the Sangat route by taking off over a dozen illegally-plying buses. PRTC staff told HT, on the condition of anonymity, that they still face problems in plying state-run buses on the Bathinda-Sangat route due to skirmishes with private operators over timings becoming a routine affair.
When HT sought to contact the finance minister over the video, he was not accessible despite repeated calls and messages sent to him through his staff for two days.
News Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com
