Pune: Hundreds of stranded passengers from other districts were eagerly waiting to go home, but the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) has cancelled its services ferrying passengers from Pune to other districts.
ST buses ferried almost 110 passengers to Ahmednagar, Jalgaon and Nashik districts. The Swargate depot was receiving calls about the bus services from Pune. But the government decided not to run more buses. Now, the government has decided to run buses for the stranded passengers who are from other states. ST buses will drop them on the Maharashtra border.
“As per the government order, we ran five buses which included two to Ahmednagar, two to Jalgaon and one to Nashik carrying 110 passengers (22 passengers each) in the past four days. Now, it has been decided to run only those buses which can carry stranded passengers to other states and drop them on the state border. The buses will run as per order till further instructions,” said Pune MSRTC Divisional Controller Yamini Joshi.
However, as per instructions of State Transport Minister and President of ST corporation Anil Parab, ST buses carried around 5,000 migrant workers with their families to the state border in buses from its various depots.
“The ST bus service is picking the stranded passengers from other states and dropping them on the state border. Even the passengers who are walking by road to their native will be onboarded and then dropped on the border,” said Transport Commissioner Shekhar Channe.
Around 250 buses from various divisions including Nashik, Jalgaon, Dhule, Ahmednagar, Nagpur picked 5,000 workers with their families walking to their homes on Sunday.
Elsewhere across the State, more than 21,700 people, most of them migrant workers, were transported over the last three days in 1,169 buses to Maharashtra’s borders with adjoining states amid the coronavirus-enforced lockdown, the MSRTC said on Monday.
As many as 21,714 people were ferried to border points in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka, the MSRTC authorities said.
PTI inputs
