KTC strategy to come out of the red

The perennially loss-making Kadamba transport corporation (KTC) has drawn up a multi-pronged strategy to come out of the red and into profits.
In a recent brainstorming session, KTC chairman Carlos Almeida and his team of officials noted that while the corporation’s monthly income was around 9.68 crore, its monthly expenditure was around 12.12 crore, which means that the KTC was suffering a deficit of 2.44 crore per month.
Almeida told TOI that a big chunk of the KTC’s expenditure is on salaries. Earlier, the salary bill was around 3 crore per month but with the 6th pay commission, the salary bill has shot up to 6.5 crore. But the government salary subsidy of 2.5 crore has remained the same.
That is why the KTC management has now decided to ask the government to pay up an additional 2.5 crore to make up for the deficit. “The KTC is running buses on uneconomical routes as the corporation fulfills a social obligation of providing transport to citizens in the remote villages where private bus operators do not go. The government has always been very supportive of us,” Almeida said. The KTC claims to run buses to 176 schools in the state.
Almeida said the corporation has already increased its revenues by over 12% in the last financial year. Enthused, he and his team has other ideas to turn the corporation around.
Almeida said the corporation has over 120 staff who are medically unfit and whose salaries add up to over 40 lakh per month. So the KTC wants to come out with a voluntary retirement scheme for them and later maybe a compulsory retirement scheme. That salary component will be saved.
The KTC also plans to increase 25 more interstate Volvo AC buses which will yield the corporation an estimated 30 lakh per month.
Another measure is to introduce private hire purchase scheme by hiring about 250 buses. In this, the corporation will have no overheads and expects to earn around 65 lakh per month.
Other ideas include increase in fleet utilization, reducing absenteeism and off-road vehicles and increasing kilometres per litre.
Almeida said that the corporation will also earn revenue from several new bus stands coming up at Marcel, Ponda and Vasco. Plans are being drawn to make existing bus stands like the one in Shiroda more commercially viable.
KTC managing director Derrick Netto said that the corporation will give incentives to drivers, conductors and field staff if they achieve targets of higher mileage.
Netto said the corporation is considering use of information technology to enhance profitability. For example, introduction of GPS will help in monitoring movement of buses and in better depot management. The corporation has a fleet of 542 buses and is planning to buy another 125 new buses under the JNNURM scheme.
KTC will also consider more commercial avenues like digital advertisements and increasing ad space in the public domain. All put together, the corporation’s initiatives are estimated to earn around 2 crore per month. “Raising fares is the last option,”
Netto said.