With people sweltering under the brazen heat of the summer season, the Tamil Nadu State Transport Commission (TNSTC) has decided to remove ACs from its buses.
And the rationale given for the move by the government is that the maintenance cost of ACs is ‘too costly’.
Last year, the State Express Transport Corporation (SETC) another state-owned organization altered seven years old AC Buses to Non-AC services. Now TNSTC of Kumbakonam is also following their footsteps. TNSTC authorities said that they are forced to do this because passengers had started to complain about the inefficiency of ACs. The resulting poor ventilation caused great discomfort to the passengers due to shutting down of all doors and window.
When Sathapriyan Kamaraj, the Founder of TNSTC Enthusiasts, a group promoting public transport was asked about this issue, he was quoted saying in a report that given the government has not procured any new AC buses in the past two and half years, it is unfortunate that even the existing ones are being converted to non-A/C buses.
The TNSTC Officials also claimed that in the absence of Annual Maintenance Contract with the manufacturer, the engineers and mechanics at the depot are forced to use reserved funds to fix this issue. To avoid this, they made these A/C buses to Non-A/C ones, so that they could be plied on roads instead of abandoning them altogether.
(With inputs from Times of India)
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