ASTC suspends 500 employees, terminates 450 in 2017
Assam State Transport Corporation (ASTC), in 2017, suspended and terminated quite a number of employees for various reasons.
Managing Director of the corporation, AP Tiwari said, “500 employees were suspended and 450 were terminated from their services,” adding that the employees belonged from all grades.
The action was taken against the employees for misappropriation of funds, negligence in service and rash driving.
Officers of the rank of Chief Personal Officer and senior engineers were also terminated.
Tiwari said that the recruitment process done in the past has created a chaotic situation in the department. According to him, almost all the drivers entered the service after giving a bribe of minimum Rs 60,000 for contractual jobs.
He said that 600 drivers were hired in 2015 out of which, according to the tests recently conducted, 342 drivers were not eligible for the posts.
He said that he has requested the vigilance department to conduct an enquiry into all past anomalies in ASTC and the letter at present is with the home department.
He added that many employees of ASTC were exploited since long therefore salaries were also hiked last year.
Now no one gets less than Rs 8,500 as monthly salary in ASTC. Salaries of people drawing Rs 7,000 per month were hiked to Rs 10,500, Rs 8,000 was increased to Rs 12,500, Rs 10,000 was increased to Rs 15,500 and Rs 12,000 was hiked to Rs 17,000.
ASTC earned over Rs 1 crore by selling advertisement space in 2017
Assam State Transport Corporation (ASTC) earned over Rs 1 crore from bus branding itself in 2017.
A source in ASTC said, “By leasing out properties for advertisement space the corporation is trying to improve the revenue collection,” adding that many companies purchased advertising spaces available on ASTC run buses.
Also, to generate revenue, ASTC signed agreements with Mercedes, Scania and Volvo for procuring high-end buses. Advertising spaces will be created even on those buses.
ASTC is procuring 175 Mercedes buses which will come within the next four months. Five Mercedes high-end buses will reach Guwahati in January.
5 Volvo buses have already reached and will be launched soon.
Scania is yet to decide on the number of buses which will be given to ASTC.
The project has been undertaken on a 90:10 public private partnership (PPP) model where ASTC will get 10% of the revenue generated from the buses. In addition, the ad space revenues will be also calculated at the same ratio.
The cost of each bus is more than Rs 1.5 crores.
The source revealed that the corporation has also leased out advertising space at various ASTC properties like Inter State Bus Terminus (ISBT) and small bus stations across the state to advertising agencies through proper tendering process. The revenue earned from the other properties is yet to be calculated.
TV screens will be installed in all the ASTC buses to further create advertising space in a public private partnership (PPP) model.
ASTC started many digital projects last year
To develop the infrastructure of Assam State Transport Corporation (ASTC), the body started many digital projects in 2017.
ASTC MD, AP Tiwari said, “As the corporation was failing to generate revenue because of various loopholes, e-vigilance of ticketing system, vehicle repairing and rent collection was required.”
Bus break down management system started in October where entire inventory of repairing vehicles is managed online. It has started on a trial basis but will be mandatory from April 2018.
The drivers are expected to submit the vehicle parts repairing requests online by sending messages from their mobile phones; the request is processed online which helps in monitoring the expenses incurred in repairing vehicles.
Similarly, online ticketing started and passengers can book tickets online through yatra.com and other travel websites.
Works for smart ticketing has also started where the conductors of buses will be provided with a ticket printer and a smart card swipe machine. Every ticket will be connected with infra ray based unique identification number, the number of tickets sold can be easily identified. The tender was floated in mid 2017 and the process is in the final stage. 200 technical experts will be hired in January 2018 and by the middle of 2018 the project will start in all the ASTC run buses.
