Govt operating only 10 SRTC buses in 3 hilly, accident prone districts

No focus on tackling menace of overloading in passenger vehicles
Fleet depleting continuously despite rise in tragic mishaps

Mohinder Verma

JAMMU, Sept 17: Establishing that it is unfazed over the menace of overloading in passenger vehicles, which otherwise is considered as one of the major reasons behind increasing road accidents, the Government is operating only 10 buses of State Road Transport Corporation in the hilly and accident prone districts of Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban.
Official sources told EXCELSIOR that majority of the road accidents in these three districts are taking place because of overloading coupled with over-speeding and this aspect once again came to the fore in two major mishaps in Kishtwar district in the recent past which claimed lives of 30 passengers besides critically wounding several others.
“The primary reason behind overloading is shortage of passenger vehicles in these three districts and this situation is being exploited by the private passenger vehicle operators albeit by risking their lives”, they said, adding “even the people don’t feel hesitant in putting their own lives in grave risk as in the absence of adequate transport service they are left with no other option but to overcrowd the available passenger vehicles”.
Keeping these aspects in mind, it becomes the duty of the Government to increase the number of State Road Transport Corporation (SRTC) vehicles in these three mountainous and accident prone districts so that people have the option to avoid overcrowding of existing vehicles.
“Shockingly, the Government despite admitting the necessity of increasing buses of SRTC in Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban districts is doing nothing and acting as mute spectator to the frequent tragic road accidents taking place because of overloading and over-speeding”, sources said.
This can be gauged from the fact that 34 SRTC buses were provided to erstwhile Doda district in 2010. Of these, 7 were deployed in Ramban, 15 in Doda and 12 in Kishtwar. However, at present only two SRTC buses are operating in Ramban, three in Doda and 5 in Kishtwar.
“This is mainly because there is no workshop of SRTC in Kishtwar and Ramban districts and a small workshop in Doda district for repair of the vehicles is having only three technical persons”, sources informed, adding “in the absence of workshop the buses were sent to Jammu following development of snag but were never sent back”.
They further said, “actually there is no mechanism in the SRTC to ensure timely repair of the vehicles and their further deployment in the areas facing shortage of passenger vehicles”, adding “it is due to inability of SRTC to ply more buses that overloading has become a routine in the erstwhile Doda district leading to tragic road accidents”.
“It is a matter of serious concern that instead of increasing the number of SRTC vehicles in these accident prone districts in view of increase in population and spread of road network the Government has allowed the situation to become worse”, sources regretted, adding “the non-serious approach of the Government is notwithstanding the fact that issue of acute shortage of SRTC buses in hilly districts was raised by legislators on the floor of the Legislature a number of times.”
Every time the Legislature was informed that Government was taking steps to augment the fleet of SRTC and as and when this exercise is completed requirement of the hilly districts will be met. But this assurance of the Government has remained on the papers till date and people are falling victim to the menace of over-loading coupled with over-speeding.
Several attempts were made to contact the officers of the State Road Transport Corporation on telephone to ascertain the progress made on augmentation of the fleet but there was no response from them.
Not only towards overloading, the Government has also maintained blind eye towards the necessity of erecting parapets on the edges of the roads particularly in accident prone areas.
During recent visit to erstwhile Doda district, a team of EXCELSIOR noticed that not only interior roads, even the Batote-Doda-Kishtwar National Highway is lacking parapets in several dangerous zones. All these aspects clearly establish that Government is completely unconcerned over increasing road accidents in erstwhile Doda district.

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