Streamlined ASTC still a far cry!

Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI: Gimmickry apart, ASTC (Assam State Transport Corporation) has been rated below par the national level on all tangible fronts – infrastructure development, fuel efficiency, disposal of ageing buses, vehicle productivity etc. The Corporation, on the contrary, buys luxurious electric and Volvo buses. It now wants to bring a fleet of Mercedes, as though to put up a brave front.

The facts speak for themselves. From 2013-2018, the State government sanctioned Rs 45 crore for erecting station buildings, boundary fences etc. However, the Corporation diverted Rs 26 crore from the amount for employees’ salaries, and that left as many as 46 works incomplete due to fund crunch.

In fuel efficiency, the Corporation scripted a record of sorts by incurring an extra expenditure of Rs 23.27 crore from 2013-18 due to non-application of fuel-efficient measures. During the five years, the Corporation buses guzzled 50.32 lakh litres more HSD.

There is a standing norm to keep records of distance traversed by a bus per day which is called as vehicle productivity. However during the past five years, the Corporation used no mechanism to monitor vehicle productivity and ended up with a vehicle productivity of only 200 km per bus per day against the national-level productivity of 300 km. The CAG has detected frequent breakdown of buses, non-plying of buses on all indentified routes, frequent cancellation of buses as some of the reasons leading to such a dismal performance on this front.

Mismanagement of overage buses also dealt a blow to the expenditure of the Corporation. A bus is considered overage eight years after its purchase or after running over 5 lakh km. Such buses, according to norms, need to be auctioned. However, instead of doing that, the Corporation simply dumped its overage buses, thereby incurring a loss of Rs 3.70 crore in the five-year period.

The CAG is not ready to buy ASTC’s excuses that bad condition of roads, congestions of roads etc lead to more fuel consumption and less vehicle productivity. It says that such problems are being faced all over the country.

The plight of the ASTC has led the CAG to recommend the following five steps:

(1) To draw a transportation policy for long-and-short-term plans for smooth operation of buses;

(2) Timely scrapping of overage buses;

(3) Proper route survey and augmentation of fleet strength to enhance vehicle productivity;

(4) Devising an efficient monitoring mechanism to record and analyse high consumption of fuel and take remedial measures; and

(5) Recording vehicle-wise data of repair and maintenance.

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