After urging the government several times to help settle the fare issue and improvise the routes, the night bus service operators are planning to close their inner city commuter services and run only on the Chakrapath circle. Operators, citing huge losses, have confirmed to halt the services by this week on the Satdobato-Lagankhel-Ratnapark, Koteshwor-Sinamangal and Bansbari-Ratnapark routes.
According to Dharma Raj Rimal, the Bagmati zonal coordinator of the National Federation of Nepal Transport Entrepreneurs (NFNTE), the government failed to meet their demands while the Kathmandu Metropolitan City undermined the problems. “We will close the routes in two days. Our demands were never taken seriously and we cannot afford more losses,” said Rimal. Two weeks ago, the transport entrepreneurs warned the government of shutting the service, unless their demands were met.
Transport Management officials say no requests of fare hike in the bus service have been received. “We would surely like to support the night bus service. But we haven’t received any formal request for fare increment or the routes,” said Sharad Adhikari, Tech director at the Department of Transport Management. He added, however, that there is no valid logic for fare increment as other recently introduced services were not demanding a hike and are operating till 11pm.
The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) granted the NFNTE Rs 4.5 million at the launch of the service in August last year. Earlier, the government had made commitments to increasing the fares by 40 to 50 percent after three months of operation which have not materialised, even after repeated requests from the operators. “Authorities always claim of the subsidy granted, which is a small amount to run the service. Our investment is a lot more as a single bus is priced at Rs 3.5 million. And we are running 14 of them,” said Rimal. Operators claim that a round trip costs Rs 1,500, including the fuel price and allowance for drivers and conductors, while the are making only Rs 700 per trip. The monthly operating cost of a bus comes close to Rs 51,000 but it has only been making Rs 15,000 to Rs 22,000.
However KMC, one of the pioneers of the service, has been saying it is not in a position to grant any more subsidies. “It’s a historic service and we will do as much as possible to keep it running. But we cannot inject more funds,” said Sadhu Ram Bhattarai, the KMC spokesperson. KMC claims that it has regularly been urging the government to segregate the night bus service from others.
The operators say they will continue to run the buses on the Ring Road even by incurring losses. “We don’t want the service to die, since we initiated it with hard work. We will continue to the serve on the Chakrapath route with six buses at the moment.” said Rimal, warning that the services would also close down by the end of this fiscal year if nothing was done about their demands.
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