Now that leasing out its fleet of vehicles appears to be the last resort of the Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) to keep itself above waters, there is barely any rationale behind retaining its legitimacy as a state entity. A report published in this newspaper a few days ago says the organisation is all for renting out its vehicles (single and double-decker buses) as a means of making up for mounting losses. The report further adds that despite high demand for public transport, the BRTC cannot use even one third of its buses and rents those to different state agencies and universities.
The BRTC has been limping for long. Makeshift arrangements to revamp the state-run transport agency have done nothing to either improve its services or maintain its fleet of vehicles. Why it is doing so badly is not difficult to find out. For decades, it has been running its fleet of ramshackle buses --- single and double deckers --- much to the shock of passengers. Recently, there were a few reports in the newspapers that mostly attempted to tell the narrative of the failing state entity due to poor or no maintenance, wrong procurement policy, short economic life of the buses, and last but not least, corruption.
The BRTC had been incurring losses for the past financial years except for the current fiscal --- the reason supposedly being its rental policy that spares the organisation a loss-incurring establishment cost, mainly on account of the salary of its staff. Its officials claim the organisation has been managing an operating profit for months by using its fleet on a rental basis. Earnings of the organisation were negative in July 2020 but posted positive with Tk 2.5 million in July 2021. But is this a solution for a state enterprise with all the facilities like maintenance workshops, related logistics and qualified technical personnel?
No doubt, wrong procurement policy and poor maintenance stand out as the prime reasons for resorting to an unlikely shift to rental service. It has been gathered that the BRTC procured nearly 1,200 buses since 2002 from India, Korea and China, making a fleet of over 1,600 AC, non-AC and double-decker buses. Also there were sophisticated buses procured from Sweden. But the number of buses on the roads is far fewer as a large number of them are sent to workshops for maintenance or written off having lost their economic life much ahead of time.
As a state entity operating since pre-independence period, it is not at all expected that the BRTC should stray away from its mandate of rendering public transport service --- fairly and efficiently. Mere addition of vehicles to its fleet is not the solution, as already evidenced. It is high time that the government found out an appropriate mechanism to run the organisation which may need a total overhaul of the system with a concerted move to revamp the corporation keeping in mind the operational deficiencies and policy flaws that have plagued it.