more-in The entire fleet of private buses in the district may not change over to the new colour code as fixed by the State Transport Authority (STA) by the end of next year. The STA had decided on a code of three colours for private buses across the State. As such, city permit buses will sport green colour, ordinary mofussil services blue, and limited stop services brown. Bus owners are required to paint their buses in new colours whenever their annual fitness test becomes due. While buses have started sporting new colours, the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD) has no record of buses complying with the new colour code. Ernakulam Regional Transport Officer Reji P. Varghese said the shift to the new colour code was likely to be completed by February 2019. He added that adopting the new colour was hardly a burden for bus owners since they had to freshly paint the vehicles anyway while producing them for the annual fitness test. However, M.B. Satyan, president, Kerala State Private Bus Operators Federation, felt February was too unrealistic a deadline, and that not all buses were unlikely to sport the new colour before the end of next year. “The fitness certificates for newly registered buses are valid for two years, and the system of annual fitness test kicks in only thereafter. Obviously, the recently registered vehicles before the new colour code are not required to change over to the new colour till the expiry of the two-year fitness certificate. So, in reality, it may even take up to two years or at least until the end of next year,” he said. Painting cost Ernakulam district has around 550 city services, nearly 1,300 mofussil services, and 100-odd limited stop services. Mr. Satyan said fresh painting of a bus costs around ? 40,000, and changing into an all new colour may cost an extra ?10,000. He further said that giving blue colour to city services and green to mofussil services would have been a more pragmatic decision since city services in places like Kochi and Kollam had already had changed over to blue by the time the STA mooted the new colour code.

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