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Even while the 40 mini-buses approved for the City under he JNNURM project have come nowhere near materialisation, the officials of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation say that the buses were not allotted to them in the first place and that the Corporation had proposed boats instead of the mini-buses.
“The mini-buses were not given to us. The Corporation had proposed to opt for boats instead of the 40 mini-buses. As such the KSRTC had no role to play in that part of the project,” said Venugopal, Ernakulam ATO of KSRTC. The proposal was put forward during the term of the previous council of the Corporation.
“The minibuses were demanded by us so that the public transportation could be extended to the small roads. But there was some difficulty in the procurement since the Volvo company from which we had to buy the buses did not supply us the vehicles. So we decided to go for boats.
Some discussions have been undertaken in this regard with Kerala Inland Navigation Corporation. But soon the elections came and the proposal fizzled out,” said former chairperson of the Standing Committee on Town Planning of the Corporation E M Sunil Kumar.
KINCO officials also say that though they held discussions with the Corporation, they were reluctant to go on with the project owing to apprehensions about running into loss.
“We can operate the boats only on subsidy; otherwise they would be running on loss. This was one deterrent. Apart from this, there were no discussions after the preliminary talks, and the proposal was gradually dropped,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Corporation officials say that though there were preliminary talks, nothing concrete has taken place to carry the proposal forward and that Corporation is still ready to give the mini-buses.
“The issue was that the Corporation had to depend on the KSRTC to run the buses. But the KSRTC felt that running the mini-buses would not be financially viable. Hence at one point we thought of opting for boats. But that was only at the discussion stage. To run the boat services we need to get the approval of the state and the Central governments. But as of now this would be difficult as the period of the JNNURM got over in March 2012 and now we are in the extension period of the project. But the Corporation can still buy the mini-buses if the KSRTC is willing to run them,” said Corporation secretary Ajit Patel.
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