Many buses of the state-run Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation are becoming unserviceable before crossing their economic life.
The number of BRTC buses has also been decreasing in recent years.
The corporation has now 105 buses categorised as ‘beyond economic repair’ before their economic lives have expired.
‘As these buses were not maintained properly we are classifying them as BER,’ BRTC chair Md Tazul Islam told New Age recently.
To another question, he said that he did not know why these buses were not maintained properly and the previous chair knew about the reasons.
‘If you don’t give medicine, then the disease will continue to get worse,’ he added.
According to at least two road transport sector experts, the BRTC has long been presiding over the expensive culture of squandering public money by not maintaining its buses properly and getting away with impunity.
Corruption cases should be filed against the people who were and are behind this situation, they added.
At present (as of May 31), the corporation has 1,600 buses in its fleet with 1,262 of them in service, 233 under heavy repair and 105 categorised as BER.
According to an operation department officer of the corporation, when a bus is termed as BER it means that it would be sold as scrap or be dumped.
The BRTC chair said that they would soon send 20 more buses for heavy repairing.
Lastly, in October 2021, the corporation called tenders to sell 153 buses, including 49 Volvo buses, as scraps.
The corporation in 1996 bought 50 Volvo double-decker buses, with a 12-year economic life, from Sweden at a cost of about Tk 50 crore, which went out of order within four to seven years after hitting the road in the early 2000s.
The last one of these buses was put out of the road as a BER item recently.
As of October 2021, the BRTC fleet had 1,600 buses, of which 1,301 were serviceable at the time, according to BRTC data.
A year earlier, in November 2020, according to the data, the corporation had 1,876 buses in its fleet, of which 1,356 were serviceable, 250 under heavy repair and 270 beyond economic repair.
In FY11, the BRTC purchased 255 CNG AC and non-AC buses made by South Korea’s Daiyu, with a 15-year life expectancy.
At present, according to the BRTC, 119 of these buses are in service, 84 under heavy repair and one classified as a BER item.
The corporation did not provide any information on the remaining 51 of these AC and non-AC buses.
In FY20, the corporation purchased 100 non-AC Tata buses from India with a life expectancy of 12 years. Of them, 83 are in service and one under heavy repair now.
The corporation did not furnish any information on the remaining 16 vehicles.
The corporation in FY12 procured 290 Ashok Leyland double-decker buses from India, of which 205 are in operation, 70 under heavy repair. The state-owned entity gave no details of the remaining 15.
Between FY13 and FY20, the BRTC bought 638 Ashok Leyland buses with a 12-year life expectancy from India. The lot included 50 articulated buses and 88 AC single-deckers purchased in FY13 and 300 double-deckers and 200 AC single-deckers bought in FY20.
According to the corporation, 32 articulated and 61 AC single-decker buses imported in FY13 and 299 double-deckers and 199 AC single-deckers brought in FY20 fiscal are in service.
Sixteen of the articulated buses are under heavy repair and two are being used by a training institute while 24 AC single-deckers imported in FY13 are under heavy repair, two were recently announced as BER and one was taken out of the fleet after announced as BER before.
After announcing a bus as BER it is sold as scrap and then it is treated as out of the fleet.
From the FY20 lot, one double-decker and one AC single-decker are under heavy repair.
Of the remaining 51 Daiyu-made CNG AC and non-AC, 16 Tata non-AC and 15 Ashok Leyland double-decker buses, most were sold off after being announced as BER while some were gifted as grant to some institutions, according to a BRTC operation department official,.
Professor Md Shamsul Hoque, former director of the Accident Research Institute under the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said that the BRTC had developed no system to manage such a big fleet of buses.
‘The Volvo buses were supposed to be serviceable for 24 to 25 years,’ he said, adding that as the bus spare parts were costly the corporation put these aside without repairing.
There has also been a culture at the BRTC of taking away and using parts of buses under repair in other buses in operation, he mentioned.
According to Shamsul Hoque, there are no differences in the quality of the services provided by the corporation and by private operators as both run buses with hired people.
This culture, he went on to say, resulted in lack of accountability, adding that without overhauling the entire system the problems will not go, rather they would become more acute.
Supreme Court advocate and Road Safety Foundation vice-president Jyotirmoy Barua said that corruption was involved in new purchases in every sector in Bangladesh.
BRTC buses are branded as BER and abandoned without proper maintenance as some people benefit from purchases of new buses, he observed.
Jyotirmoy urged the Anti-Corruption Commission to file cases against the people who failed to take care of these buses.
‘As there is no accountability, the scope for corruption is growing day by day,’ he added.
Transparency International Bangladesh executive director Iftekharuzzaman on Friday told New Age that the BRTC buses in question were not supposed to be out of service if they were properly maintained.
‘It should be examined as to why BRTC buses go out of service earlier,’ he said, adding that it should be ascertained if someone benefited from selling these as scraps and taking new projects to buy more buses.
Consumers Association of Bangladesh president Ghulam Rahman, too, said that these buses did not have proper maintenance due to lack of negligence.
‘It is a common practice in Bangladesh to handle government properties poorly,’ he said, adding that during any political violence properties like BRTC buses become the first target of attacks.
BRTC chair Tazul said that they were currently giving highest priority to the maintenance of buses.
‘We are scheduled to buy 320 air-conditioned single-decker buses from South Korea this year at a cost of about Tk 450 crore,’ he said in response to a query.
These buses would have a 15-year economic life and these are scheduled to join the BRTC fleet at the end of 2022, he added.
After independence, the BRTC purchased a total of 3,611 buses between FY73 and FY20. The amount of money spent on the purchases was not available.
According to BRTC data, it purchased a total of 2,214 buses from Pragati Industries Ltd and different companies in India, Sweden, South Korea and China between the 1999–2000 and 2019–2020 at an approximate cost of Tk 1,300 crore.
