BMTC drivers, conductors taking passengers for a ride

Incidences of ticket fraud, rudeness, assault said increasing

The interior of a BMTC bus

By Shubhankar Chakravorty

BANGALORE (Sept. 13)—The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation is facing mounting disciplinary problems, with incidents of drivers and conductors verbally and physically abusing passengers and stealing money from them on the rise, a BMTC official told The Softcopy.

Common violations by conductors and drivers include them:

* Failing to issue tickets to passengers who have paid their fare and pocketing the money.

* Failing to perform their duty properly by not issuing tickets or accepting fares.

* Reusing used tickets and pocketing undeclared fares.

* Refusing to give change.

* Overcharging and pocketing the excess fare, or undercharging and not issuing a ticket, and pocketing the fare.

* Skipping bus stops.

Also, there has been a rising number of reports of bus crews being rude to and even assaulting passengers, the chief of the BMTC’s human resources department, G.G. Hegde, told The SoftCopy. He was unable to immediately provide documentary evidence to support his claim.

Inspections failing to prevent abuses

Regular monitoring by the line patrol vans that trail BMTC vehicles to check whether they are following prescribed routes and their crews dealing honestly with passengers is failing to solve the problem.

Debasis Satpaty, an engineering student in Bangalore said, “It has become a daily affair that a conductor doesn’t issue you ticket after charging money for it.”

Gunjari Chatterjee, a working professional in the city agreed, saying, “The conductors refuse to return change for the money paid for fares charged, and a lot of times do so rudely.”

Dr. Manish, who practices at a city hospital recounted a similar experience of either being charged less or more than the fixed price and not being issued a ticket.

Crooked conductors take advantage of people from outside Karnataka, who make up a major part of the daily commuter traffic, by exploiting the language barrier.

The BMTC appears to be unaware of the scale of the problem and is failing to have its concerned bodies work together to prevent passengers being exploited.

Kempegowda Bus Station, better known as Majestic bus stop

BMTC hopes complaint cell will help

Hegde said the problem as not an easy one to solve and that there was a need for a public consensus on the problem to enable more effective countermeasures to be taken.

“The BMTC has an operational Public Complaint Cell for registering cases from the common people and an internal Default Section for monitoring the services and functions of the corporation,” he said.

Both bodies have five geographical departments—east, west, north, south, central—and there is no central collation of complaints by either body.

As it has turned out, the expansion of the system has been justified by a steady increase in complaints.

H.S. Mallikarjunaiah, a public relations officer with the BMTC, said the complaint count is declining, but the same time, he appeared to contradict himself by saying there has been a steady trickle of complaints made to the cell.