Interview: What Is Happening With Pala Depot?

Pala: KSRTC Pala depot is always comes for discussions nowadays. The main reasons is that the cancellation of schedules from Pala. The recent example for the cancellation is of a Bangalore bound bus. KSRTC was running an AC Air bus from Pala to Bangalore. Unfortunately due to the regular break downs and AC failure, that service is transferred to Ernakulam depot.

Later on, the schedule was running with two super deluxe air buses which was given by Ernakulam. That bus is also stopped service because of less collection. Present ATO of Pala, Mr Sulaiman told to KSRTCBlog that, most of the days we were getting the collection less than The Thousand rupees for 1090Kms.

Pala Bus Station (Left), An AC Air Bus which was running to Bangalore (Right)

Few of the lines from A Telephonic Interview that i did with Mr.Sulaiman, ATO, Pala

Q: Sir, Pala depot is cancelling a lot of schedules nowadays, what is the reason behind that?
A: The main reason is of the non availability of buses. All the 5 Year old Fast Passenger buses are converted to ordinary buses, as per the rule. So, at present we are running short of Fast Passenger Buses. One of the super fast bus is under maintenance work in a RW. Non availability of buses is one of the main reason for it.

Q: Sir, You had an AC bus for Bangalore service, Later on you got a Super Deluxe Air bus from Ernakulam. But still that service got cancelled. We heard a rumor that, all these things are happening because of the Private Lobby in Pala, especially the private bus operators who are running to Bangalore. What is the exact reason?
A: Sujith, We don't have any pressure from any private lobbies here. Ac Bus got regular complaints and breakdowns. Also the timings of the bus was not good for the passengers. Especially we were coming from bangalore with less passengers, because it was starting from there by 1Pm. Regarding the super deluxe bus, It got cancelled due to the less amount of collection. We have monitored the collection for one month. The maximum collection of that bus was 10,000 Rupees for 1090Kms. According to the policies of KSRTC, that service is not worth, so we got an order to stop that service. Most probably we may get an Express bus to Bangalore service shortly.

Q: Sir, heard a news that, rather than the Bangalore service, Pala depot cancelled few services to Thrissur, Palakkad, Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikkode and some Malabar buses. This is also because of the poor collection or any other reason?
A: I did not get a proper answer for this. But still, he said the same thing again that we are running short of buses.

Q: Ok, Sir, do you have any plans to start any new services from Pala?
Yes we have, but unfortunately i am moving from here to Paravur today. A new person is going to come today. I will be handing over the charge by today afternoon itself. By the way, we have plans to reduce the time interval of all Malabar buses which is running in this area. Also we are giving proper training and instruction to the crew of the buses. We also have a Target for every schedules. Now a days we are giving counselling and other instructions to our employees regarding "How to achieve target?"