KOLHAPUR: The civic body is going to recruit as many as 50 new drivers to manage the available fleet of Kolhapur Municipal Transport (KMT) following complaints from distant localities about irregular bus services.The KMT is currently relying heavily on drivers recruited on contract basis but on an average around 45 buses remain off the road every day due to absence of drivers. According to officials, the KMT is falling short of over 20 schedules - total trips assigned to drivers - on a daily basis. Sanjay Bhosale , additional manager of KMT, said, "Around 200 drivers are on contract basis and we have noticed that most of these remain absent frequently which forces us to cancel the trips. The KMT is facing revenue losses due to such incidents and more over the citizens are facing inconvenience."The KMT is facing tough competition from parallel modes of transport and illegal transport and officials fear if incidents of cancelling the trips continue the transport undertaking will lose daily passengers to the parallel transport."We have issued notices to 25 drivers for remaining absent during the working hours for multiple times. The public notice to recruit the new drivers will be issued soon. Soon, we are going to do away with the contractual and daily wage staff from the KMT to increase efficiency of transport service," said Bhosale.According to the officials, the losses incurred due to cancellation of trips amounts to around Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000 every day in addition to Rs 2 lakh loss caused due to imbalance between earnings and spending. The KMT is heavily dependent on ticketing revenue and need to explore other revenue sources to decrease its losses.

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