Kolkata: With dwindling passenger count as a fall-out of the coronavirus scare, many inter-state and intra-state buses in West Bengal have gone off the roads, said the bus owners associations here Thursday.
Local and city buses are also plying with fewer passengers than usual, leading to huge losses to the owners of privately-owned buses, Rahul Chatterjee, general secretary of All Bengal Bus Minibus Samannay Samity informed. “Less than 50 per cent of buses are running in different routes be it inter-state, intra-state or local,” Chatterjee said.
The situation worsened Thursday with less number of passengers taking buses compared to earlier days in the week due to the coronavirus scare. West Bengal Transport secretary NS Nigam had earlier said that passengers in state-run buses have also gone down drastically owing to the situation.
With only a few buses and fewer passengers, the long-distance bus termini at Esplanade and Babughat wore an almost deserted look Thursday, as if it was a public holiday. Buses for different cities of Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand leave from these two termini.
Joint Council of Bus Syndicates general secretary Tapan Banerjee said that operators are finding it difficult to recover fuel cost for running the buses.
“With educational institutions, several offices and many public places closed owing to the COVID-19 spread in some parts of the country, passenger count has gone down severely and as such, several private buses have been off the roads,” Banerjee said. He, however, hastened to add that owing to social responsibility, public transportation will be continued by the private operators along with the state-run buses.
Chatterjee said that with advisories to people to stay at home as much as possible, many drivers and conductors are also not reporting for work. “Buses to and from Odisha and Jharkhand are plying, but there very few passengers,” he informed.
Agencies