Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

Now, panchayats to the rescue of RTC!

By Our Staff Reporter

VIJAYAWADA FEB. 13. In a bid to boost its revenue, the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTRC) is planning to involve in a big way village sarpanches and local panchayats to step up occupancy rateo. As part of the strategy, the corporation has decided to offer special assistance and incentives to panchayats and sarpanches who help in this regard. The task of the local panchayats and the sarpanches would be to encourage villagers to patronise solely RTC buses and shun private buses, autos and other means of transport. ``We are still working out the modalities and nature of assistance we will be extending to panchayats and sarpanches, '' Shobha Nagi Reddy, RTC chairperson, told reporters here on Thursday. She said that the corporation had already undertaken a preliminary exercise in this direction and a number of sarpanches had expressed their keenness to promote the cause of the RTC. The sarpanches would also keep a vigil on illicit operation by private operators and bring it to the notice of the Government.

Ms Nagi Reddy felicitated about a dozen sarpanches of Krishna district who had helped the corporation in improving the services by encouraging the local people to use only RTC services. She categorically rejected the question of the Government privatising the world's largest public transport company, but hinted that the corporation was in the process of downsizing the staff by offering them VRS. She however, said that there was no move to go in for compulsory retirement (CRS) of the employees, as is being speculated.

Ms Nagi Reddy ruled out the question of the corporation extending concession to people in the unorganised sector like farm labourers, as the corporation was in no position to incur additional expenditure.

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