It is quite possible that in the coming days, you shall board the buses operated by the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST), but the conductor would not have any tickets to issue. The Undertaking is facing issues as on October 23, the BEST Committee refused to accept the proposal to extend buying of more stacks of paper tickets - the colourful ones - that has made a comeback.
The BEST administration on Thursday asked for approval for 36,000 blocks of paper tickets worth Rs 1.70 crore. This however was rejected by the committee which demanded that the electronic ticket issuing machines be brought back after repairing them.
Senior committee member, Sunil Ganacharya slammed the proposal stating that it is a stop-gap arrangement. "The administration should take efforts to re-install ETIMs instead of increasingly relying on paper tickets," he said. Anil Kokil, another member said that this proposal was the administration's attempt to get a backdoor approval from the committee, after the latter had decided to reject the same in February this year.
Suhas Samant, who is also leader of the BEST Kamgar Sena, said that there were many conductors who have joined after BEST stopped paper tickets. "If we don't pass this, BEST might not have tickets," Chairman of the committee Ashish Chemburkar, said and tried to convincing the committee members. However, the overwhelming decision of the committee was to reject the proposal.
A BEST official said that the they had stocks for around one month and would need to procure tickets soon. The proposal, had it been passed would have ensured tickets for around four months.
At present at least 65-70 percent of ETIMs are in poor condition and needs repairs. These are lying in bus depots. This has became a headache for conductors who have made temporary arrangement of issuing tickets using black coloured leather bags. The conductor is forced to carry both ETIM and boxes with paper tickets.
These colourful tickets are punched and then handed over to the passenger. The paper tickets are re-entering the system due to shortage of ETIMs. There are 9,500 ETIMs but majority of them are sheer useless. This is the reason the BEST is asking for more paper ticket blocks and if not provided then passengers would not be issued tickets. Life of ETIMs is 5 years and many of them are either reaching there or have surpassed.
