Cancellation of bus services to flood-hit areas has led to the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) incurring an operational loss of ₹5.4 crore.
The corporation, in a press release, said that from August 8 to 12, it cancelled 2,702 bus services and 4,060 were partially cancelled. The release states that owing to floods, landslips and cutting-off of road links, it had cancelled services on routes such as Mangaluru, Mumbai, Madikeri, Kundapur, and other places in the State. Services to various destinations in Kerala such as Kannur, Kozhikode, Kasaragod and others were also cancelled.
Non-operation of services also forced the KSRTC to cancel online bookings and return ticket amount to passengers. The KSRTC has cancelled 45,233 tickets and returned ₹2.67 crore to passengers who had booked tickets online on these days.
Meanwhile, the KSRTC Staff and Workers’ Federation has announced that all the employees of the four road transport corporations — KSRTC, BMTC, NWKRTC and NEKRTC — have decided to contribute a day’s salary to the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund.
The federation has also urged the management of the corporations to handover the money without delay. In a release it said that last year, the employees had donated a day’s salary for flood victims of Kodagu district in August 2018, but the management failed to handover the cheque to the Chief Minister in time and was only given in May 2019.
It was stated that the cheque was handed over only after the issue got reported in the media. The federation has demanded that the management not repeat the act this time.
