Air-conditioned BEST buses that are running across the city could be “Corona spreaders” as per a former traffic department official, Prashant Sane. The official said that most of these BEST AC buses are run by private contractors who don’t keep records of sanitization procedures, thus making it impossible to know if they are following norms. It is also worth mentioning that AC buses on some routes run without conductors, so there’s no real enforcement of social distancing.
"When it has been established that the use of air-conditioners can be harmful amid COVID-19, the BEST undertaking has been running AC buses on several routes," he said. Sane added that he even sent a complaint to the Chief Minister’s Office, though he didn’t receive a suitable response.
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General Secretary of BEST Kamgar Sanghatana, Jagnayaran Kahar said that they have already alerted BEST about these concerns though he added that BEST hasn’t been paying attention. “The buses are run so that the contractor does not face losses. We have been consistently alerting the BEST administration about this, but they have not been paying attention. This is like playing with the lives of citizens and employees,” Kahar said.
Refuting these allegations, BEST officials said that AC buses only run on routes 40, 348, and 706. Officials added that bus route 624 in Malad has no conductor, and hence skips all stops after picking up passengers from Appapada on the way to Malad.
Though bus services were halted in the city during the pandemic, it has begun to reopen in phases. BEST buses are considered the lifeline of Mumbai given that thousands of people rely on its services to travel across the city on a regular basis. However, air-conditioned buses pose a grave threat with regard to the spread of COVID-19 for all the factors mentioned above, and it makes a great deal of sense to halt such buses until a viable solution is discovered.
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