The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : RTC lets untrained drivers loose on the roads

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Friday, Jun 08, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

RTC lets untrained drivers loose on the roads

S. Sandeep Kumar

Frequent accidents involving privately hired buses by the corporation

HYDERABAD: Last week, an elderly woman near Neredmet crossroads suffered head injuries when an APSRTC hired bus hit her while she was walking on the road. Fearing an assault from the public, the bus driver abandoned the bus and fled.

Ever since, the bus has been lying idle in the Neredmet police station with an accident case booked against the absconding driver. Incidents of mishaps involving privately hired buses of the RTC have become quite regular in the twin cities.

Grave risk

It is increasingly becoming evident that most of these accidents could well have been avoided and precious lives saved if only the drivers were trained properly. Shockingly, the RTC callously and wilfully appears to be allowing `killer' drivers on hired vehicles on the roads without adequate training, posing a grave risk to the citizens' lives. Three hundred of the 2,800-odd buses plying in the city region of RTC are privately hired buses from transport contractors. They are supposed to recruit two drivers for each bus with five years' driving experience and a heavy vehicle-driving license.

Double standards

While RTC's regular staff drivers have a one-month induction training programme at its Staff Training College in Hakimpet, drivers on the hired buses allegedly get trained for just three days once a year by the RTC management at the same school!

If the double standards are not enough to jolt you, the RTC management also charges about Rs. 2,000 as `training fee' (with boarding and lodging) per driver of the hired buses for attending the three-day programme. "Our training programme for drivers of hired buses is more focussed about their physical and medical fitness rather their driving ability. Most are lorry drivers with little or no skills at all to drive in the city traffic," admits a senior RTC official.

"There is no reason why we should not provide them training on par with our regular drivers. Special training camps should be held to train drivers on the existing hired buses without much delay but it is a policy matter that has to be decided by the higher authorities," he explains. Drivers on such hired buses are said to have been involved in 14 accidents a year at an average in the last three years.

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