National
Govt likely to give more time to transport operators
With the deadline to registering the existing transport committees and associations expiring on Monday, the government is likely to give more time for private transport operators to do so as companies.With the deadline to registering the existing transport committees and associations expiring on Monday, the government is likely to give more time for private transport operators to do so as companies.
In a bid to dismantle the organised cartel in the country’s transport sector, the government on April 17 had decided to stop registration and renewal of public transport committees and associations operating as not-for profit organisations.
The decision, which followed the amendment to the Transport Management Directives-2004, also required the transport entrepreneurs to register as private companies, which had been earlier registered with several transport companies and associations. They have been asked to register as companies within the fiscal year 2017-18.
Following the crackdown on the transport syndicate, the government had formed a task force to come up with recommendations on introducing overall reforms in the transport sectors, including ways to deal with the situation.
A preliminary report of the task force, submitted to the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT), has recommended more time for transport entrepreneurs to register as companies. According to Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport Raghubir Mahaseth, the recommendation was made considering the time it would take to register thousands of vehicles.
“The legal status of the transport committees and associations has ended from today [Monday]. But the task force has suggested extending the deadline until Paush. We have yet make a decision,” said Mahaseth.
Clarifying a confusion over smooth operation of the public vehicles run by the now defunct committees, Minister Mahaseth said that imposing ban on such committees does not necessarily mean the public vehicles operating under them become illegal. “These vehicles are owned by individual entrepreneurs not the committees,” he said.
The MoPIT statistics show nearly 325,000 public vehicles are in operation across the country. Most of them have yet to be registered under a company.
“As those public vehicles still have the route permit and there will not be any problem in their operation, but they need to get registered as a company,” MoPIT Secretary Madhusudan Adhikari said.
The task force has also suggested the government to allow those committee to withdraw money from the bank accounts to treat injured passengers, compensate the families of those who died in accidents and operational expenses of the erstwhile committees.
On May 4, the government had frozen bank accounts of 245 such transport committees for their involvement in enforcing strike in the public transport sector.