City buses violating norms; Police to form special team

Mangaluru: In the backdrop of repeated complaints from callers during the weekly phone-in programme regarding city buses violating norms, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic and Crime), Laxmi Ganesh assured to form a separate police team next week to keep tab on city buses moving about in the city.

The DCP was addressing a meeting of police officials and city bus owners held after the phone-in programme held at the office of the city police commissioner on Friday, June 7.

The DCP said that most of the complaints were regarding non-issuance of tickets to passengers, not parking buses in bus bays, reckless and negligent driving, passengers travelling on foot-boards, failure to give seats to senior citizens and women, bus staff behaving indecently with passengers and many other issues. The DCP pointed that his department has been receiving such complaints repeatedly and told the bus owners that it is their duty to provide services in tune with the requirements since the bus service is a public service system.

Dakshina Kannada Bus Owners Association president Deepak Alva spoke on the occasion and informed that the mentioned complaints had already been brought to the notice of the bus owners during past meetings of the association. All bus owners would again be informed about non-issuance of tickets and other points that rose in the current meeting, he said.

Mr Alva said that the bus owners of buses found violating the norms repeatedly have been intimidated about the same. He further claimed that during verification, the buses mentioned were found not moving about in some routes where the violations reportedly took place.

In response the DCP said that the concerned can get concerned can get such issues sorted out by taking the same with ASP Manjunath.