Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is believed to have asked the state transport minister, Snehashish Chakraborty, to prepare a distinct policy and chart out guidelines for bringing Totos under the framework of authorised modes of transport. The chief minister is also said to have expressed concern over the fact that the number of government buses has dwindled over time and the commuters have to bear the brunt for no fault of theirs.
Miss Banerjee, who held a meeting at the state secretariat, Nabanna, with the state transport minister and the chief secretary BP Gopalika on Tuesday discussed issues like the bottlenecks holding up faster movement of traffic on city roads and to deal with the paucity of buses. The plying of Totos, which are currently barely regulated, on major thoroughfares often become an impediment to the smooth flow of traffic.
In the meeting, the chief minister is said to have advised Mr Chakraborty to look into possibilities like increasing the number of shifts from three to four for transport employees in order to increase the frequency of plying of state buses, to alleviate the problems faced by commuters. She also expressed concern over the fact that despite a huge chunk of money being spent on the salary of employees, there has been no increase in revenue generation.
She stated that the sudden crunch in number of buses surfaced as the fate of 1180 e-buses, which the state transport department had already approved to buy, is hanging in the balance owing to a case in the Supreme Court. Miss Banerjee, at an earlier meeting, had expressed anger over the alleged encroachments along thoroughfares and pulled up officials of the state transport department for being lax in removing such bottlenecks impeding the movement of traffic.