Transport dept will offer VRS to 1000 employees: Madan Mitra

The West Bengal Transport Department will start offering VRS to around 1000 of its employees within a week, Transport Minister Madan Mitra said today.
"Within a week, we would start handing over VRS to employees working in the city," Mitra said at the Merchants' Chamber of Commerce here.
"Afterwards, outstation employees of four transport corporations would be offered VRS... We are ready with the fund and will pay them in three installments," he said, adding that more people were expected come up for the scheme.
There are around 22,000 employees in state-owned transport corporations and the department was planning to offer VRS to some 4,000 of them. The annual subsidy bill of the corporations is Rs 700 crore.

On erratic driving and high fares charged by autorickshaws, Mitra said the department has already started taking measures and a special cell (with a phone number 1073) at the Lalbazar police headquarters would soon come up to deal with them.
The minister also said it would be quite a difficult task to improve the city's transport system due to the acute shortage of road space.
"Ideally, we need 30 per cent of road space, but in the city it has come down to just four per cent," he said.