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| Govt.awaiting central help for reviving SRTC | | | Early Times Report
Jammu,September 4 :- The Jammu and Kashmir Government is yet in a fix as far as the scheme for the revival of the State Road Transport Corporation(SRTC) is concerned. The SRTC has suffered losses to the tune of Rs.390 crores and the state Government has no resources to revive the corporation and bring it out of the red.
A team of experts has recomended that a sum of Rs.308 crores be earmarked for the revival scheme of the SRTC.It is in this connection that the state Government had approached the Finance Commission and the Planning Commission.The two commissions have okayed the revival scheme and the state authorities were waiting for the release of the amount.
A senior officer connected with the Transport Department said that unless "we receive Rs.308 crores we will not be able to revive the SRTC because we are not in a position to pay R s.18 crores which were needed for paying wages to the SRTC staff which has not been paid for the last four months.He said because of recurring losses the SRTC was not in a position to purchase a new fleet of buses and there was no scope yet for augumenting the existing fleet.
The officer said that the Government was exploring various ways for bringing the SRTC out of the red.One such scheme was to downsize the staff strength.He made it clear that during the last over 20 years ministers have been liber al in recruiting their favourites in the SRTC as drivers,conductors,mechanics and clerks.The result was that the bus-staff r atio was 1:7 when it should have been 1:3 or at the most 1:4.In reply to a question the officer said that downsizing of the staff may not aggravate the problem of unemployment because the Government plans to have a golden handshake with those SRTC employes whose age was above 50 years.
He said that the SRTC was one among 10 public sector corporations that showed recurring losses.He said the corporation faced severe financial problems and last year it had sought from a bank Rs.18 crores which it had to spend on meeting the wage bill of its employees.But later it failed to repay the loan with the result the loan money was deduced from the Government;'s budgetary support to the SRTC."We have to revive the SRTC.We have to first of all of buses and trucks yielded some profits so that in future the Government could formulate its expansion programme,"he said
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