Although, the population of Gujarat has increased from 6.27 crore in 2012-13 to 6.71 crore in 2016-17, the passengers carried by Gujarat government’s main public transport company — Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) — recorded a decrease in passengers carried from 8,410.60 lakh to 7,887.10 lakh for the same years. With these comments, the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) has rapped the GSRTC in its report for the year ending March 2017, while stating that it has not been able to keep pace with growing demand of public transport in Gujarat. The report was tabled in Gujarat Assembly late Wednesday. The CAG has recorded a number of findings on its audit of the GSRTC for the years between 2012-13 and 2016-17, like number of passengers it catered to, strength of its fleet, fleet utilisation, mismatch between numbers of drivers and conductors, to highlight that the government’s public transport company needs to improve its performance in several areas. It is to be noted that the GSRTC has incurred loss of Rs 184.45 crore in the year 2015-16. The GSRTC was established on May 1, 1960 and is “mandated to provide an efficient, adequate, economical and properly co-ordinated road transport service”. The management of the Corporation is vested with a Board of Directors comprising of chairman, vice-chairman & managing director and 14 official and non-official directors appointed by the Government of Gujarat and Government of India. It has 16 divisions and 125 depots across the state. The CAG report stated, “The fleet strength reduced from 8062 buses at the end of 2012-13 to 7603 buses at the end of 2016-17. During 2012-13 to 2016-17, though 5879 new buses were added to the fleet, the Corporation scrapped 6081 buses from its fleet.” Recording a number of reasons affecting performance of GSRTC, the CAG stated that the fleet utilisation ratio (ratio of buses on road to those held by the Corporation) has never been able to meet the target set by the government for it during the review period. “…the Corporation did not achieve the target fixed by Government of Gujarat in any of the years from 2012-13 yo 2016-17. It could not even achieve the all-India average fleet utilisation in any of the years under review. Considering the lower of the two as targets on a conservative premise, if the Corporation was able to achieve at least the all-India average, it could have earned revenue of Rs 114.86 crore…during the period…,” read the CAG report. “The fleet utilisation of KSRTC, MSRTC and APSRTC was in the range of 90.57 to 91.70%, 91.50 to 93% and 99.20 to 99.70%, respectively during 2012-13 to 2015-16 as compared to 83.89 to 86.72% of the Corporation during the same period,” it added. It has been recorded that GSRTC has not been able to keep pace with growing demand for public transport as the number of its buses reduced from 8,062 to 7,603 during 2012-2017. On the contrary, private buses have increased significantly from 44,030 to 5,4214 over the period. “The percentage share of Corporation’s buses in the public transport of the State decreased from 15.48 per cent in 2-012-13 to 12.30 per cent in 2016-17 due to decrease in the fleet of the Corporation,” the report stated. “The gradual reduction in share of public transport indicates that there is a lack of adequate planning on the part of the Government of Gujarat as well as the Corporation for co-relating the need of public transport with the growing population and the role of the Corporation in the public transport sector,” the CAG has recorded while adding, “Public transport has definite benefits in terms of costs, congestion on roads and environmental impact. The public transport services have to be adequate to derive those benefits. However, the Corporation was not able to maintain its share in public transport.” The CAG said that the operational performance of GSRTC was deficient due to lower fleet utilisation, operation of express buses on uneconomic routes, cancellation of scheduled kilometers, non-procurement of fuel efficient mini-buses among other things. For all the latest Ahmedabad News, download Indian Express App

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