Acute staff crunch, absentee workers halt city bus depot

LUDHIANA: Coupled with acute shortage of staff, employees going on leave have crippled the city bus depot. Every routes are missed because of unavailability of drivers. Authorities showed their helplessness as the drivers are not allowed to perform overtime to manage the show.
There are 94 buses and 105 drivers in Pepsu Road Transport Corporation (PRTC).Besides, two drivers who are on leave since the past one month, two or three drivers go on leave daily.
Speaking about it, PRTC general manager Surinder Singh said, “We do not have other option as we suffer from severe staff crunch. We cannot take overtime from the drivers as we do not have funds to pay them accordingly. We have a requirement of minimum 127 drivers if all buses on all routes have to follow the timings.”
Accepting that they also give some of the routes a miss, general manager of Punjab Roadways, RS Grewal, said, “We have 134 buses but lack required number of drivers to ply these. Moreover, 9-10 people are on long leave. Besides, we also cannot deny leave to an employee for a day or two if there are exigencies in his family.”
“Though we try to keep things going, sometimes we are forced to miss some routes,” he admitted.
Based on the timetable, five buses of Punjab Roadways should ply from Ludhiana to Bathinda, but not even a single bus caters to commuters, who are compelled to opt for private buses. Similarly, against 40 routes being mentioned for Jalandhar, no bus exists. Moreover, the routes of Jeewan Nagar, Chintpurni, Ganga Nagar via Moga, Ferozepur via Hosiarpur, Hisar, Mehatpur, Nakodar Ropar via Morinda, Nangal, Dhyanpur, Ganga Nagar via Bathinda, Kapurthala via Nakodar, Abohar via Bathinda, Raikot via Chandigarh, Rada Sahib via Chandigarh, Naina Devi, Jaiton and Rishikesh misses one vehicle daily.