The discrimination against student bus passengers has resurfaced in the district with private bus operators ignoring the cashless smart card earlier introduced by the district administration under its ‘Savari Girigiri’ project. Though the operators of around 250 private buses were initially willing to accept the card, they changed the stand later because of poor enforcement by officials.
The smart cards given to around 3,000 students as part of a trial run are now rarely used by them. Nearly 225 schools that initially agreed to cooperate with the project too have almost dropped it because of the delay in covering other schools in the network.
“The district-level students travel facilitation committee was very keen on the full-fledged implementation of the idea as it was expected to end the merciless special queue system for students to board private buses. Now, it has come back to the same situation,” says Bijith Babu who once questioned the private bus operators’ crude practice in Mukkom. He alleges that the police and the Motor Vehicles Department are remaining onlookers of the issue.
Managements of some of the schools enrolled under the scheme say the project implementation has been at a snail’s pace even after a public sector bank invested around ₹30 lakh for the printing and distribution of smart cards to students. Wheel cards for private bus conductors to easily read the smart cards too have been under consideration to popularise the scheme, they point out.
Meanwhile, Motor Vehicles Department officials say the project failed to take off with the poor cooperation of private bus operators who are apprehensive about their revenue under the new system. The direction given to the bus crew to purchase the wheel cards on their own doused their spirit, they say.
“It was mainly a pet project of the former District Collector and the implementation committee was left clueless on the further management of the project after his transfer from the district,” say Regional transport Commissioner C.J. Paulson, who was earlier part of the implementation committee. After the Collector’s transfer, bus operators sought more clarity on the benefits they get through the project and backed out from the idea citing loss of revenue, he says.
Suresh Babu, former district president of the Kerala Private Bus Operators’ Association, says the project was dropped by them mainly because of the lack of clarity on a promised project meant to compensate the additional financial liabilities on private bus operators. “A few had even challenged it in the court with a claim that the district administration was trying to bypass the existing State-level rules and regulations on students’ concessional trips,” he says.
