Seemandhra Stir Impact : RTC losing Rs 7cr daily

Officials fear further dent in the public transport undertaking’s revenue

Hyderabad : The APSRTC suffers daily average loss of about Rs 7 crore daily, ever since the Telangana was announced. On the day of announcement, 4 buses were damaged, on the second day 13 were damaged and on the third day 17 buses. But the huge losses to the organization comes from the non-functioning depots in the areas of Seemandhra region due to bandh calls. According to officials, the ‘copy cat’ bandh calls are impacting the depots, which were not affected earlier.

Apart from Chittoor, districts of Rayalaseema has seen ‘zero’ operations during these days. Overall there are 60 per cent operations in the Seemandhra region for last two days. It dropped further and operations recorded were 42 per cent on Friday. The trend is that it may drop in the coming days, if agitation continues or spreads to new areas. For last three days, even the services to Bangalore were halted, as the buses passes through Rayalaseema.

The RTC officials, in coordination with police are suspending services in routes where there is risk of being damaged. Even the Chittoor, which was mildly affected, is slowly turning non-operational. Coastal-Andhra saw between 10-20 per cent operations being affected. For instance Nellore 85 per cent, Guntur 80 per cent and Krishna 90 per cent buses operated.