Trinamul Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has recently urged the Paribahan Bhawan, state transport department headquarters, to increase the number of government buses daily, at least by two in the Esplanade-Pujali route to reduce plights of commuters amidst the scorching heat.

Only four buses run by the West Bengal Transport Corporation (WBTC) ply everyday between Esplanade and Pujali in the Budge Budge area of South 24 Parganas district. But the Paribahan Bhawan is virtually in a fix on how to provide two more buses in the route at a time when there has been an acute shortage in adequate number of WBTC buses.

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The state transport department is regularly flooded with demands from passengers for increase the frequency in routes connecting Kolkata and adjoining districts.

Sources in the state transport department said that around 250 government buses, including 40 AC and 20 Volvo fleet are lying unused at different depots of the WBTC for the past few months. All these fleets are not in operational conditions because of mechanical faults like defective tyres, gears, clutches etc.

It requires huge funds of around Rs 13 crore to repair all these buses so that they could be made operational. A proposal has been sent to the state finance department at the state secretariat Nabanna requesting it to release the amount as soon as possible, the sources said.

“Two months are over but the finance department is yet to release the funds. Plights of passengers could be reduced during the sweltering heat and humidity once we repair the defunct buses and ply them,” he added.

Earlier, the cash-strapped transport department had decided to engage private agencies to ply government buses in several routes to generate revenue and increase availability of fleets through outsourcing initiatives.

But the initiatives could not materialise because the private agencies felt that the move was not viable to them in terms of revenue generation.

The private operators found that the kilometre mileage in plying government buses is very low compared to that of the private buses. For government buses fuel consumption is very high against poor mileage.

Sources in the transport department said that the outsourcing scheme was not lucrative for the franchisers. The scheme is still effective only in two routes C-26 (Howrah-Baruipur) and D-1 (Howrah-Barasat) out of around seven routes that were given to franchisers by the department.