Bleeding of state transport to promote ruling party players is appalling: Manpreet

Chandigarh, December 8: The killing of initiative by officials in the Pepsu Road Transport Corporation (PRTC) in too blatant an attempt to promote ruling family owned transport has been lambasted by People’s Party of Punjab chief Manpreet Singh Badal as not only shameful but also disgusting and sickening.

“It is due to the persistent efforts of one official that PRTC started coming out of the red and providing much cheaper alternative to the people travelling by super luxury buses while adding more buses to the fleet of ordinary buses. It is shocking that this official has been shunted out within 10 months rather than allowing him to further improve the service and replicate this model to the state transport all over the state. The problem is while the PRTC super luxury buses started charging Rs 650 for Delhi airport, the buses owned by Sukhbir Singh Badal charge anything between Rs 1800 to Rs 2400. Earlier, the only luxury bus service from Jalandhar to Delhi airport was withdrawn to make it monopoly route for Suhbir’s luxury fleet”, he said.

Manpreet said this issue has hit the headlines repeatedly and here was the latest example as to how the private sector was being promoted at the cost of the state transport sector as any officer managing state transport efficiently to elbow out private players would not suit the ruling dispensation. He pointed out the biggest fleet of super luxury buses was owned by Sukhbir Singh badal who was earlier instrumental in tweaking the transport policy. It was after a long time that PRTC had started turning the corner. He recalled it was the PRTC that earlier covered entire Malwa belt. Turning this giant sick was part of the design in the ruling class having direct interest in transport.

He conceded that the transfer of officials in the government was a routine affair but not within ten months and that too when in this case the official concerned had given very good results within this short span thereby also reducing debt of this public sector undertaking by Rs 100 crore. This amounted to killing the initiative.

He said this was not only just cheating the people but robbing them.