Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

TNSTC crew unhappy over police action

Staff Reporter

Coimbatore: The crew and staff of the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) are sore over the recent enforcement drive conducted by the Coimbatore City Police against footboard travel.

The staff federation while welcoming any enforcement drive to ensure the safety of passengers, was upset over the measure of police registering case and levying fine on conductors on charges of "allowing passengers to travel dangerously on footboard".

The sources in the federation pointed out that owing to the economic boom and industrial revival, there had been scores of migrant population settling down in Coimbatore. There had not been a single new route being introduced since 1995. There had been only replacement of existing fleets and not even additional buses on the existing routes owing to fiscal constraints and increasing operational costs. Even the practice of operating special additional buses on the existing routes during peak hours had been dispensed with owing to various constraints.

Under such circumstances, footboard travel became inevitable in a growing city like Coimbatore. In packed buses and crowded bus stops, preventing or resisting footboard travel was not in the hands of the running crew.

Any attempts to prevent passengers from boarding a bus would only lead to altercations resulting in law and order problems.

Scapegoats

Meanwhile, the decision of the police to prosecute conductors for footboard travel was only an act of making the crew into scapegoats, the federation sources said. So far, 116 conductors had been booked for entertaining footboard travel.

The objective of the police was to ensure the safety of passengers. But, the enforcement officers at the lower level had resorted to intimidation of crew by threatening to book them for other violations. If cases were registered for overloading, the corporations would pay the fine but making the conductors pay the fine was impractical, they said. The police should instead fine those travelling on footboard travel, they suggested.

The Corporation has issued a circular asking drivers and conductors to avoid permitting footboard travel. The ultimate sufferers would be those using the public transportation system, they said.

Police clarification

When contacted, police sources said that the fear of the TNSTC crew was unfounded. Initially, when the drive was launched to instil the fear of law and to create awareness there were cases of conductors being fined for permitting footboard travel for the sake of collection revenue.

Fine imposed

Understanding the difficulties, now the police were only making the footboard travellers disembark from the bus at traffic junctions and fine was being imposed on them.

The enforcement officers have been clearly instructed not to register cases against the crew.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

More ward committees in the offing
Witnesses neither natural nor truthful, says defence counsel
TNSTC crew unhappy over police action
Associations want better Coimbatore
Manpower shortage hits foundries
Review meeting
Award
Around the City
In Coimbatore Today

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu