Finance minister T M Thomas Isaac announced a Rs 3,000-crore revival package for the KSRTC in his budget speech on Friday. “It will be a year of revival for the KSRTC. Our target will be to stabilize the revenue and expenditure of the corporation within three years. The revival package will not be in the form of subsidy. It will be capital investment aimed at making profit. The government has been considering Prof Susheel Khanna’s report,” he said.
Mentioning the need for restructuring of KSRTC management, he said professional experts will be inducted. The government will extend its support for a financial restructure by minimizing the bunch of accumulated liabilities. The minister promised timely disbursal of pension and salary. “About 50% of the pension liability of the KSRTC will be taken over by the government as grant. A significant portion of pensions and salaries have been arranged by the government as loan every month. The system will continue till the rejuvenation package proves effective but the KSRTC has to achieve operational profit in 2017-18,” said Isaac.
The KSRTC was allotted a total sum of Rs 44.40 crore in the budget. Funds have been allocated for the corporation’s infrastructure development, computerisation, e-governance, training programmes for staff and modernization and qualitative improvement of fleet.
An amount of Rs 9.9 crore has been set aside for infrastructure development and modernisation of depots. For total computerization and e-governance in KSRTC, an amount of Rs 12.10 crore has been allocated. The projects include hardware and software upgradation, surveillance cameras focusing on women’s safety , automatic fare collection smart cards and Wi-Fi equipment in buses.
