Taxi, bus strike to hit industry. | |
| The state-run Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) is all set to play the good samaritan to the IT-BPO industry where employee-travel logistics are likely to go haywire from February 22. The indefinite strike by taxi and private bus operators is against the state government which is insisting on installation of speed governors by June 30, 2008, citing a high court order. |
| |
| The BMTC has agreed to charter around 300 buses to the IT-BPO industry, which heavily depends on transport services to ferry employees, to tide over the crisis that would arise from the strike. |
| |
| "We are getting requests from private companies to give buses to them on a casual contract. We are confident of meeting the industry's demand," BMTC's chief traffic manager (operations) Dastagir Sharief told Business Standard. |
| |
| He, however, chose not to disclose the revenue the corporation could earn. |
| |
| BMTC, which is the only profit-making state-owned transport corporation in the country, has a fleet of 4,829 buses and makes around 73,000 trips per day in the city. |
| |
| Presently, it charters around 800 buses everyday to factories, schools, colleges and also to software major Infosys Technologies. |
| |
| This will not be the first time that the BMTC would have come to the rescue of the IT-BPO industry, Sharief said. In fact, when taxi operators joined the truckers' to protest the government move to make installaton of speed governors mandatory in all public transport vehicles in the third week of January this year, the BMTC chipped in by hiring out buses to the companies. |
| |
| "But the demand for buses is more this time as taxi operators have announced in advance their intention to join the strike," Sharief said. |
| |
| According to the Bangalore Taxi and Tourist Operators' Association, around 20,000 taxies attached to over 1,000 companies will go off the roads in Bangalore from the midnight of February 22. |
| |
| Though the association office-bearers claim the transport sector will be losing around Rs 3.5 - 4 crore per day, they maintain that the strike is inevitable as speed governors would reduce their operational efficiency, besides drilling a hole in their pockets. |
| |
| Association member Deepak, who runs a travel agency in J P Nagar, said: "If a speed governor costs Rs 2,500 to 3,000 in Delhi, it is being sold here for Rs 15,000. |
| |
| The manufacturer-bureaucrat nexus is trying to exploit us by making speed governors mandatory." |
| |
| While the transporters whine about the speed governors, IT industry body Nasscom fears that the strike could affect service deliveries from India to both domestic and international customers. |
| |
| "If issues like the transport strike become the reason for non-delivery, customers across the world may be deterred from working here," Nasscom contends. |
| |
| The companies, on their part, have begun to put their crisis management modules into action. Infosys director (human resources and education) T V Mohandas Pai said the company had made contingency plans to ferry employees. "We expect the government to protect our interests," he added. |
| |
| While some companies are advising their employees take to the bike and car pooling, many have approached the BMTC for buses. Sharief said: "We have informed our staff to be ready to handle the situation. We will pay them overtime allowances. The spare fleet of the BMTC will be at the disposal of the hiring companies." |
| |
| This apart, BMTC has also decided to make an additional 10,000 trips in the regular fleet during the strike period. |
| |
|
| |
