Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy Urges APSRTC to Boost Revenue and Improve Services

Hyderabad: Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy asked the APSRTC authorities to chalk out plans to mop up revenue from all sources by making optimum use of their commercial properties like bus depots and stations. The Chief Minister, who reviewed RTC performance on Wednesday, asked the RTC officials to increase revenue by plying buses on time and rationalising profitable and lossmaking routes in the State.

He discussed on the issues pertaining to APSRTC, particularly the opening of bus stations, maintenance of bus depots and plying of buses on time etc with the Ministers and officials at Secretariat. Kiran urged the RTC officials to immediately start satellite bus depots, bus stations wherever there is demand and is absolutely required like Bheemgal, B Kothakota and Narsapur etc. He directed the RTC to operate more buses through these places and post traffic controllers and inspectors for regulating running of buses.

On the occasion, RTC officials informed that there are 213 APSRTC bus depots in 23 regions under 7 zones in the State. There are 777 bus stations, 1,881 bus shelters, 7,763 bus routes and 1,23,871 employees on the rolls now. They said that increase in prices of diesel periodically is putting a big burden on the APSRTC. They said that the fare structure of APSRTC is less compared to other States like Karnataka.

The Chief Minister assured releasing due payments from the State government after a study of the fare concessions offered by RTC and tax due by RTC to the State Government. Transport Minister Botcha Satyanarayana, Finance Minister Anam Ramnarayan Reddy, Govt Whip Anil, Chief Secretary P K Mohanty, Principal Secretaries, V Bhasker and Premchandra Reddy, Principal Secretary, Transport, Lakshmi Parthasarathy, APSRTC MD A K Khan and other officials attended the meeting.