Chennai: The commuters of Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) no longer need to worry about rainwater leaking from roof and spurring from window panels as all 3,843 buses running on the city roads have undergone fitness checks to ensure fully functional headlights, wipers, window louvres and a non-leaking roof.
The department on July 12 initiated the pre-monsoon repair work, this year in all the eight state-owned transport corporations.
Within two months, it is learnt that MTC, State Express Transport Corporation (SETC), Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (TNSTC) - Salem, Kumbakonam and Madurai completed the work.
“As of July 13, there were 74 MTC buses with faulty wipers and 395 buses with roof leakage. As the central depot had a stock of wipers, they were installed within a week and roof repairs took about one and a half months,” said Davidar.
He further added that the crew was initially taken aback when they were asked to send reports on non-working wipers and other faults in buses and only by the end of July, the work gained pace.
Both the commuters and workers of MTC in the city cheered and said this would bring down the number of bus accidents, this year.
“We drive with a sense of fear in rains with jammed wipers and breaks as most often, the actual cause of the accident goes unreported and the driver is suspended. This move by the department would mean more security for us as well as the passengers,” said one of the drivers at the Koyambedu bus terminus.
According to the reports collected by DC, in July, of 22,179 buses plying in the state, as many as 3852 buses had leaking roofs and wipers were non-functional in 439 buses. The number has now come down to 364 and 17 respectively.
The top five areas with the most number of buses operating with leaking roofs include Chennai (376), Madurai (344), Dharmapuri (317), Salem (273) and Tirupur (268).
The officials of the transportation department said the pre-monsoon work in all the eight state-owned transport corporations would be completed by the end of October.
