Passenger count dwindling; Bengal buses going off roads

With dwindling passenger count
as a fall-out of the Coronavirus scare, many interstate and intra-state buses in West Bengal have gone off the roads, according to bus owners' associations here on Thursday. Local and city buses are also plying with fewer passengers than usual, leading to huge losses to the owners
Joint Council of Bus Syndicates general secretary Tapan Banerjee said that operators are finding it difficult to recover fuel cost for running buses. "With educational institutions, several offices and many public places closed owing to the COVID-19 spread in some parts of the country, passenger count has gone down severely and as such, several private buses have been off the roads,"

he said. He, however, hastened to add that owing to social responsibility, public transportation will be continued by the private operators along with the state-run buses. Chatterjee said that with advisories to people to stay at home as much as possible, many drivers and conductors are also not reporting for work. "Many of them have gone home and are not coming for work," he said, expressing fear that the number of buses on the roads will further go down in the coming days. The association secretary claimed that the Sikkim government has stopped entry of public vehicles from other states, thus leading to a number of buses in north Bengal that ply to and from different destinations in the Himalayan state going off the roads. "Buses to and from Odisha and Jharkhand are plying, but there very few passengers," he said. Chatterjee said that the operators of long-distance buses are offering huge discounts on fares to attract

Banerjee said that his association distributed hand sanitisers and masks to the drivers and conductors of 200 buses to ensure their safety. "