The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has decided to stop schedules that have a daily average revenue below Rs 5,000. It has already advised its zonal offices to cancel services under Malabar, Thiru-Kochi and Venad in this regard. Accordingly, a large number of schedules have been either stopped or temporarily cancelled.
The KSRTC is also closely monitoring the situation after the hike in diesel price, and has decided to stop all the unviable services across the state. This has created serious hassles as some routes of the state are nationalised and only state corporation buses ply there. The problem is more serious in districts like Idukki, Wayanad and Thiruvananthapuram where the KSRTC is the main mode of public transportation.
According to a senior KSRTC official, a bus which runs around 200 km daily requires at least 50 litre diesel. The corporation pays Rs 61.20 for a litre, and the average daily cost per bus on diesel alone is Rs 3,060. The average mileage is 4.5 km. The minimum daily expense per bus is Rs 5,000, including salary. The average staff pattern in KSRTC is 2.5 persons/bus. Unfortunately, the average collection on some routes is below Rs 1,000, he said.
The corporation has to incur an additional burden of Rs 18-20 crore per month due to the price hike.
Earlier, it had urged the government to allow it to cut down 1,800 unviable services. However, because of political constraints the Cabinet rejected this and decided to extend Rs 28 crore as an immediate relief. This is against a request of the corporation to provide of Rs 200 crore assistance, urgently. The average monthly fuel bill now comes to Rs 70 crore.
KSRTC, with an average monthly income of Rs 150 crore, has a revenue-expenditure gap of Rs 55 crore. It operates 5,491 schedules on average with a staff strength of 40,180. There are around 40 companies in the state which are having fleet of 50 buses and they get diesel at subsidised rate.
