The Maharashtra government has sanctioned ₹1,000 crore financial package for the cash- strapped Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) for the next six months, minister Anil Parab said.
Parab, who is the chairman of MSRTC, said this financial package will help the transport body get back track and will meet expenses such as salaries of employees and fuel costs for the next six months.
The transport body had suffered revenue losses of around ₹3,000 crore during the COVID-19 lockdown period, Parab said, adding that this in turn resulted in pending salaries.
The minister has also informed the MSRTC officials to make ST financially viable and try to maximize the use of available resource materials, along with increasing income and cutting down on daily expenses.
In a meeting with the MSRTC senior officials, Anil Parab stated that the ST, which used to incur a loss of around ₹50 crore per month pre-COVID crisis, had to shut down services in the entire state for five months due to lockdown, except for essential services in the Mumbai metropolitan area.
However, it was observed that during this period, the ST faced an average loss of ₹22 crore on daily basis, while the monthly loss of ₹50 crore has now reached ₹350 crore.
The government last month had sanctioned ₹120 crore as an advance from the contingency fund to pay salaries to the employees till October.
As per the state government’s guidelines, ST has made conditional efforts to transport lakhs of essential personnels -- laborers, doctors, nurses, police, government employees, cleaners, cane harvesters, students in foreign countries and essential goods.
The MSRTC is one of the biggest road transport undertakings of the county with a fleet of nearly 18,000 buses and around one lakh employees.
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