TEAM HERALD
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PANJIM: The All Goa Private Bus Owners Association has called on the government to roll back the hike in passenger tax, green tax and infrastructure cess failing which they would sit on a hunger strike at the office of the department of transport at Junta House. The Association has also asked for acceptance of their demand for a 100% hike in bus fares following deregulation of diesel prices.
The AGPBOA has said that they would place their demands before the chief minister through a representation by the 25th of March giving him a week’s notice to accede to their demands.
Addressing a press conference Saturday, Tamhankar said that the chief minister who had announced the tax hike in the Budget, was only out to put bus owners out of business.
“We were hoping for a good budget, given that the government had reached out to the bus owners and even formed an association. However, in the budget, he has imposed a passenger tax, a green tax on vehicles as well as infrastructure cess of Rs 12,000 on owners as well as transfer fee for second hand vehicles. With this we might as well keep our buses off the roads,” Tamhankar said.
“We demand that the fares be hiked to Rs 10 for the first three kilometres, while the fare for each subsequent kilometre be kept untouched at 10 paisa,” Tamhankar said justifying the 100% hike on the issue of unavailability of change.
He also hit out at the government for seeking to run the bus stands on PPP mode saying that the decision was against what the BJP had been campaigning while in the Opposition.
“When they were in the Opposition they had termed PPP as ‘padd poddlole project’. Now when they are ruling they are using the same system to manage the bus stands,” Tamhankar said.
They have also demanded the removal of Sudin Dhavalikar as Transport Minister and replace him with Subhash Phaldessai, who they say has experience in the transport sector. In the wake of certain utterances by the party Tamhankar said that the support of the MGP was not needed since BJP had claimed that all its MLAs are together.
