Pvt bus, minibus operators urge Bengal govt to extend deadline of fitting tracker device

An organization of private bus and minibus operators urged the West Bengal Transport department to extend the deadline for fitting vehicle-tracking devices with emergency buttons till December this year. State Transport minister Snehasis Chakraborty said, the government was mulling over the move to give some more time to the bus operators and working on a solution but extending the deadline for such a long time is not possible.

General Secretary of West Bengal Bus and Minibus Owners Association Pradip Narayan Bose at a press meeting on Tuesday said that since the private bus industry has become a “sick one”, more in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in the past two years, it would be next to impossible for the operators to fit their vehicles with the location tracker and emergency button within a month’s time.

“Private buses and minibusses carry 85 percent of the daily commuters in the city and elsewhere in the state. We have been giving amenities to passengers even incurring operating losses due to the Covid situation and the rise in fuel prices. Still, the state is not considering repeated pleas of the bus owners' bodies to either spare us from installing the device or bear the expenses. In the present situation, we are requesting the state to extend the March 31 deadline to December 31 to enable us to mobilize our resources for procuring the devices of any registered product,” Bose said.

He said if the state went ahead with the March 31 deadline making it mandatory for every stage carriage to fit the mobile tracker when being granted the CF (certificate of fitness), then more than a thousand buses will stop plying within a month’s time with at least one-two staying off the road every day.

He further added extending the deadline till the end of December is not feasible and it may lead to an appeal for the further extension when December ends and puts in jeopardy the entire project which is more crucial for the safety of women and children.