The Maharashtra State Transport Corporation department, known as a loss-making body for years, is now minting money, minister Uday Samant has said, taking a dig at the previous Uddhav Thackeray regime and praising the Eknath Shinde government for turning around the department’s fortunes by “working in the field instead of sitting at home”.
In a press conference in Mumbai on Wednesday, Samant said: “The ST Corporation is independent but gets help from the Maharashtra government some times. In the last 2-4 years, due to lack of proper attention during Covid-19 and before the pandemic, the corporation was running at a loss. It did not even have enough money to pay the salaries of its employees.
“The Eknath Shinde-Devendra Fadnavis-Ajit Pawar government successfully pulled the corporation out of such a dire situation. It has shown that if there is a desire to work, even a loss-making corporation can be transformed into a profit-making entity.”
Samant added that under the Thackeray government, the losses of the corporation were on the rise. Due to complete shutdown of traffic during the lockdown because of Covid-19, the body faced a loss of Rs 6,300 crore between March 2020 and March 2021. The state government then had to provide financial assistance for the salary of employees from time to time.
“During the previous government, when Ajit Pawar was the finance minister, the government had decided to pay Rs 300 crore per month to the ST corporation. After Eknath Shinde became the chief minister, in the budget session of March 2023, the Shinde-Fadnavis government announced a decision to provide free travel concession in all types of ST Corporation buses to senior citizens who completed 75 years. For this, Rs 100 crore was given to the body by the government as compensation.
“In the same session, the government announced 50 per cent discount in ticket fares to women. For this, the corporation was given Rs 180 crore as compensation by the government. The government also announced a 50 per cent ticket discount decision for senior citizens aged between 60 and 75 years and Rs 26 crore were given in lieu of the same,” he said.
The minister said because of the state government’s decisions, 18 of STC’s 31 departments had become profitable. Among these, Beed district is at the first position, Parbhani is second and Jalgaon is at the third position. The decisions have not only benefited the corporation but also modernised buses by introducing 150 electric buses as well as 50 mini buses each in Satara and Ratnagiri districts, 700 new diesel buses, and 500 leased buses in the last year.
Further, the minister claimed that the subsidy to be paid by the government for the wages of ST employees has gradually reduced to zero, which means the corporation has started meeting its expenses.
Comments
0 comment