VIJAYAWADA: Passengers commuting from Machilipatnam to various parts of Krishna district faced a harrowing time on Thursday morning after the hired bus drivers of State Road Transport Corporation (RTC) staged a protest at Machilipatnam bus depot refusing to load more passengers than permissible limits.
Around 30 of the 50 hired bus services came to a grinding halt after hired bus drivers protested against carrying more passengers than permissible limits contending that exceeding passenger limits caused more consumption of diesel. They also alleged that Machilipatnam depot manager had turned a deaf ear to their demands. RTC officials convened a meeting with owners of hired buses over the issue and arranged special buses from various depots in Vijayawada to avoid inconvenience to the passengers.
Speaking to TNIE, Machilipatnam bus depot manager P Satyanarayana Murthy said that the issue snowballed into an agitation after driver M Lakshmaiah, riding a bus between Machilipatnam and Eluru, halted the bus near Hanuman Junction on Wednesday and refused to move further.
“The driver had asked the conductor to make the passengers de-board the bus citing overcrowding. However, the conductor convinced him to drive the bus to the destination. But after reaching Eluru, Lakshmaiah refused to drive anymore and convinced other drivers to do the same after discussing the incident,” Satyanarayana Murthy said. Following this, agitating bus drivers halted services on Machilipatnam-Vijayawada and other routes. Following the agitation, the bus depot manager convened a meeting with A Koteswara Rao, owner of the bus that Laskhmaiah was driving, and convinced him that overcrowding of bus won’t affect diesel consumption.
“To avoid recurrence of such incidents, we convened a meeting with the bus owners and explained them about the operational mechanism and capacity. We expect the situation to return to normal on Friday,” Satyanarayana Murthy said.