In order to tackle the problem of dearth in manpower and to give more facilities to the commuters, the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking on Wednesday stated it will soon introduce e-ticketing and digital payment in the bus service.
On the monthly committee meeting held on Wednesday, the proposal of introducing digital payment was tabled. Presently the transport undertaking has no means of digital transaction. The proposal stated a merger with digital wallets - PhonePe and PayPoint will also involve. The undertaking has also stated on bus stops ticket vending machines will be installed and conductors will also be given new ticket vending machines, which will having debit/credit card swiping facilities.
“Presently BEST is suffering huge crisis in man-power hence the introduction of digital payment will ease the burden of having number of conductors on service,” said a senior BEST official, however a time line on the completion of the project is not yet mentioned yet.
Meanwhile, committee chairman, Anil Patankar has rejected the proposal of hiring 400 bus conductors on contract basis from manpower service providers.
Earlier, the transport undertaking floated a tender inviting applications for the post of bus conductors who would be hired on contractual basis. However members of the committee claimed on Wednesday, they were were kept on the dark on the matter and were unaware of the fact which led to the chairman scrapping the proposal.
BEST committee member and Congress corporator, Bhushan Patil claimed, the transport undertaking’s decision of hiring 400 conductors will incur more loss to the transport undertaking.
