Why are these buses running on Pune’s roads?

PUNE: The Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd (PMPML) fleet has been running a number of buses in extremely dangerous condition where the windows, wipers, fenders, radiator grills and other parts have kept together with strings.

HT spotted many such damaged buses on the city roads which were in an extremely poor condition and almost each bus had a story to tell with damaged internal and outer body parts.

HT spotted many buses damaged windows and wind shield, broken front single seat, damaged front glass and also the entire front body part damaged and in some of the buses parts of the body were tied up with ropes and strings.

There have been incidents in the past when commuters have got injured due to these damaged parts of the buses. “Last week when I was travelling from Kothrud to Deccan Gymkhana bus stop when I got hurt while getting into the bus. The front part of the bus was broken and its side part hit to my leg and I got hurt on my knee,” said Sagar Chintal a commuter.

Talking about this situation of damaged buses Jugal Rathi, founder president of PMP Pravasi Manch said, “Commuter centric planning and operations is totally missing from the PMPML administration. It has become budget oriented and with high capital expenditure services of the PMPML. As such attention is not given to proper scientific timely maintenance and scheduling the planning to suit commuters needs as to timing and frequency. It is totally the either bureaucracy or contractor centric work going on. And also the work is given according to the employee centric convenience. Breakdowns and damaged buses are not monitored properly by the organisation. The newly come electronic buses is just of temporary eyewash to the citizens and won’t help much to change the situation.”