The Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC), a state-owned transport agency, has decided to operate its fleet of buses under its own management, as it planned to stop leasing its vehicles and not renew its existing deals with private operators.
Instead, BRTC's service would be operated with the agency's own manpower from different offices across the country, including Dhaka city.
It also planned to introduce an e-Ticketing system, in a bid to reduce hassles of manual ticketing, and to attract more passengers.
Earlier, the ministry of communication, to protect public interest and assets, asked BRTC to stop leasing out buses to private operators.The ministry observed that private operators did not take proper care of the leased buses, resulting in major damage of public property and funds.
In accordance, BRTC had already stopped leasing its buses.
Confirming the development, Jasim Uddin Ahmed, chairman of the state-owned transport agency told the Dhaka Tribune, "BRTC will operate its fleet with its own manpower. Some measures have already been taken in this regard."
"We have already stooped leasing our buses and held up renewals of deals which were awarded before December 31 last year. The BRTC will take back its leased vehicles from private operators after completion of their lease period," he said.
Jasim Uddin said buses that came back from their private operators would go through maintenance and would later be operated by BRTC.
According to ministry of communication officials, the BRTC had now become a profitable agency, and earned Tk15m in profits last year.
Irregularity and corruption of BRTC employees were the main reasons behind its losses. Though it was a losing concern, the ministry and BRTC management expanded its fleet and routes to make it profitable, said ministry officials.
BRTC chairman said: "The target of expanding our fleet and routes has been achieved. We have earned significant profits. We believe that the figures of our profits will increase in the future. We are going to begin an e-ticketing system for passengers soon. It will allow them to travel without hassle in BRTC buses."
Meanwhile, the new e-ticketing system was already introduced on the Motijheel-Uttara route, and soon all commuters of the capital would be able to benefit from it. BRTC currently operates 640 buses in the capital and 88 new air-conditioned buses have been recently included to its fleet, he said.
He said BRTC now has a total of 1,158 buses, which have been operating on different routes of the country. There were some buses in the workshops undergoing maintenance. These would also start plying the roads once the work was complete.
According to BRTC officials, the remainder of the buses have been operating on other long and local routes of the country. The agency already started its Eid transport activities from August 1.
The BRTC fleet is comprised of three kinds of buses "“ single decker, double decker and articulated "“ mainly imported from India, China, South Korea and Sweden, they said.
