The management committee of the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking cleared the contentious 'conductors-on-hire' proposal on Tuesday.
According to the proposal, the transport undertaking will acquire 400 new CNG buses on wet lease for a period of ten years. The contract will cost Rs 1,942 buses to the BEST and along with buses the supplier will also provide private drivers and conductors for manning the buses.
While committee members of Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) jointly supported the tabled proposal, members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had expressed their disapproval.
"Bringing in new private conductors will exploit the interests of the BEST workers as there could be more job cuts in the future, this is the first step towards privatising the transport body and we don't support it," Prakash Gangadhare, senior BJP corporator and BEST committee member told FPJ.
"There is a shortage of buses in BEST and new bus need to be added in the fleet at the earliest as the ridership have also grown rapidly in the past one year," said Baban Kanavje, BEST committee member and senior NCP corporator.
