Provide insurance cover for RTC buses: Rights groups

Hyderabad: Citizens’ groups demanded that the government introduce insurance for the RTC buses so that in case of any accident the victims could get proper compensation.Lakhs of people use road transport including the RTC and private buses to reach their destinations. The citizen groups opined that in the absence of insurance for RTC buses, the victims were not getting timely compensation.

Say in the absence of insurance, accident victims are not getting timely compensation

The RTC buses, it may be mentioned here, are exempted from insurance. When accidents take place, the RTC gives compensation based on certain guidelines framed after the judgment of Sarla Verma vs Delhi Transport Corporation case in which the court had asked the Delhi Transport Corporation to provide a compensation of over Rs 16 lakh to Sarla Verma on the death of her husband, who was working with a Central government institution.

RTC officials said there were guidelines to calculate the claim amount as per the salary and life span of the person if he had died in accident. If the casualty is a techie, then the compensation would be higher.Citizens for Better Transport convener S Jeevan Kumar said the government should evolve a mechanism to ensure that there was insurance cover to the passengers. Giving an example, he said that people watching cricket were being provided insurance cover as the stadium was insured and in case of an untoward incident, the authorities could claim the insurance money.

He demanded that the government evolve a mechanism so that it would not be a burden on the government and the claims could be paid by the insurance companies. The experts pointed out that Railways had brought separate insurance cover by charging Re 1 from the passenger on ticket booked through IRCTC, which contributed 40 per cent of the ticket bookings. The RTC too could adopt such schemes, he added.However, the RTC officials told The Hans India that there was no need for insurance for the RTC buses since the government took care of the compensation in case of accidents.

“There are over 10,500 buses in the corporation and if the insurance is taken, it would put an additional burden of Rs 65 crore to Rs 70 crore every year,” said the official. Any insurance company would want to earn money and for this they would charge hefty amount as premium, which was not possible for the corporation to bear the cost, said the official.