Kochi: It is almost three weeks since the United Democratic Front in Kerala appointed a subcommittee to submit politically feasible proposals to revamp the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC). The committee is yet to hold its first meeting because some of its MLA members are on tour.

The subcommittee has a long list of issues to address when it starts work. The following are the issues to be addressed:

• Priority to supply of spare parts, tyres and batteries
• Policy of replacement of buses
• High cost of operation per bus per day
• Inadequate earnings to meet the total cost of operation
• Concessional travel
• Poor performance of 30 per cent of the operating units
• Poor labour productivity
• Reduction of staff overheads
• Service benefits to employees under the Kerala Service Rules
• Accident control
• High maintenance cost per vehicle
• Below optimum revenue receipts owing to present mix of services
• Poor upkeep of bus stations and passenger amenities

KSRTC is the seventh largest public transport undertaking in Kerala having a fleet strength of over 4,500. KSRTC accounts for 17.80 per cent of the total stage carriages offering services in the state. According to figures, KSRTC’s share has been coming down in relation to the total number of buses to 6.82 per cent in 2001.

The percentage of overaged buses in KSRTC has decreased to 9.76 per cent in 2001 from 32.94 in 1980. According to the latest figures, the agewise distribution of buses owned by KSRTC shows that 2,194 buses out of the total buses of 4,478 buses are below five years old, while 918 buses are between five and seven years. As many as 437 buses are below 10 years.

It has the second highest value in respect to cost per bus per day. Salary per employee is higher by about 12 per cent in the transport corporation. As of today, KSRTC incurs a loss of about Rs 14 crore per month or Rs 3.50 lakh per bus per year or a daily loss of Rs 44 lakh.

During the Ninth Plan period, the government provided Rs 55.71 crore as Plan outlay towards capital contribution and another loan of Rs 12.25 crore was converted as special grant. Thus, capital contribution by the government was about Rs 68 crore during the Ninth Plan period. The total share capital till 31 March 2002 was Rs 106 crore from the state government and Rs 23 crore from the central government.

KSRTC has loan repayment commitments to the tune of Rs 133.10 crore as on 31 March 2002, with KTDFC and Hudco accounting for Rs 86.5 crore and Rs 46.27 crore, respectively. Owing to continuous cash loses and simultaneous increase in staff benefits, the overdue payments are pretty precarious.

Currently, KSRTC has a total staff strength of 34,046. The strength of the operating staff is 19,084 of which 5,000 are engaged on a temporary basis. The KSRTC staff-bus ratio is 7:46, which is comparatively on the higher side. The availability of staff per operable is further higher at 9:20. The crew strength per operable bus is 5:16.

Only 81 per cent of the duty hours of the crew is scheduled to run the bus and the remaining is lost in rest or check in/out times. The average productivity of staff is only 40.29 vehicles per km per day per staff. A crew strength of 5.16 persons per bus is able to run only 267.37 vehicle km daily. It means that a set of conductor and driver is only operating 104 km per day. It gives an average speed of 16 km per hour of steering duty for driver and conductor. These are much below the all-India average.

There are 22,000 pensioners and family pensioners in KSRTC. The monthly pension cost comes to Rs 5.5 crore. The Kerala High Court has ordered KSRTC to deposit 10 per cent of its daily collection separately to avoid the treasury ban in the payment of pensionary benefit on the basis of retirement seniority. The pension bill will go up sharply from 2002 to 2008 because the retirement is expected to cross 2,000 employees annually. The total additional commitment on pension would be Rs 80 crore annually.

The safety record of KSRTC buses is much better than the private buses in the state, but the level of accident frequency is very high when compared to the size of the state and the number of vehicles. As per the available figures, KSRTC buses were involved in 1,617 accidents. During the six month period of April to October 2001, KSRTC buses were involved in 323 major accidents and 995 minor accidents in which 104 persons died.

The annual frequency is estimated to be 2,700 accidents and 220 deaths. KSRTC has an overdue amount of Rs 8 crore towards payment of motor accident claims. It is estimated that the annual cost on account of accidents is Rs 9.5 crore. The breakdown level of KSRTC is very high. Every year about 33,000 breakdown takes place. It implies that every day 2.40 per cent of schedules and 2.34 per cent of the buses are experiencing breakdown.

In other words, after every 10,000 kms of travel the bus is experiencing a breakdown. As much as 12 per cent of the vehicles are under repair at any time. It is quite serious to note that one-third of the breakdown is due to tyre defect or punctures. Engine defect is noted in 21.8 per cent of the breakdowns. According to figures, KSRTC spends Rs 2.40 lakh per bus per year on maintenance.

In 2001, 4,388 buses were scheduled of which only 275 buses were operated in Thiruvananthapuram, representing 6.27 per cent of the total buses. On moffusil routes, 2,472 ordinary buses (56.33 per cent) and 1,196 fast passenger buses (27.26 per cent) were operated. Thus a higher category of buses including super fast passenger (330 buses) and super express (97 buses) and super deluxe (16 buses) accounted for 10.09 per cent of the buses. The predominance of ordinary and city buses is one of the reasons for low yield in terms of revenue earned per passenger kilometre.

In fact, revenue earnings per passenger kilometre close to fare per passenger kilometre of ordinary service (least priced). In other words, KSRTC is not able to derive the benefit of minimum fare fixed and higher fare rate for express and deluxe services.

There is no data on identification of uneconomic routes or schedules. Though revenue data is available at schedule level, cost data is available only at the unit level. According to studies, there should be at least 13 passengers in the bus (22 per cent load factor) to recover the fuel cost. If all variable costs (fuel, material labour etc) have to be recovered, there should be at least 39 passengers in the bus. If the present total cost is to be recovered, the load factor should be 93 per cent, but it is doubtful whether this is being achieved.

State Planning Board vice-chairman V Ramachandran has submitted a detailed report, which has been elaborately quoted above. The report was approved by the full planning board and submitted to the government in April 2002, along with a set of recommendations to improve the KSRTC’s functioning. But the transport department has not made any move so far.