The ban on big notes by the Centre has impacted the APSRTC which suffered a loss of more than Rs. 5 crore in the last few days.
The RTC earns about Rs. 10 crore per day (The income depends on muhurtams and festivals). But it had to cancel some services due to poor Occupancy Ratio (OR), the authorities said, leading to a loss of about Rs.1 crore a day.
Many passengers are postponing or cancelling their journeys due to lack of change as the conductors are insisting on exact fare and are not accepting the old Rs. 500 and Rs.1000 notes.
The APSRTC, which has the largest fleet in the country, transports 65 lakh passengers over 45 lakh km by operating 12,000 buses every day. It employs 61,000 workers and runs services to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Odisha and Telangana.
“The average OR in APSRTC is 68 per cent. But the ratio has dropped to 62 per cent and below in the last five days. On November 10, the OR was 60 per cent and on the next day it was 62 per cent and there was a drop in reservations and current bookings in many services on November 11 and 12,” said RTC Executive Director (Operations) G. Jaya Rao.
The officials said they expected good revenue during the Karteeka Masam and the muhurtams.
“The Corporation is operating about 650 buses to Hyderabad and about 500 buses to Tirupati from various destinations. But the OR has come down in many routes. We have not booked any Karteeka Masam packages too and the city services were badly hit,” said Corporation Chief Traffic Manager (CTM) Srinivas Brahmananda Reddy.
“Due to poor OR, advance and current reservations, we are forced to cancel buses in some routes. We are making efforts to increase the OR by maintaining small notes in the ticket issuing counters and with the conductors,” Mr. Jaya Rao told The Hindu .
