Facebook KSRTC fan club gives facelift to service

Kochi: At a time when many dismiss the Kerala Road Transport Corporation as a ‘dusty’, ‘useless’, ‘uncomfortable' service, a group of youngsters, who are ardent fans of KSRTC, are trying their bit to revive the lost charm of the state owned transport corporation.
Apart from the die-hard patronage of KSRTC, this group under the banner “I Love My KSRTC’  is facebooking to promote the government fleet.

Their love for KSRTC buses has made them join a group on Facebook to promote KSRTC and organise various activities for the welfare of the service. The youngsters get busy with cleaning buses, deck up buses with stickers and even decorate them to make the buses more appealing, especially during festivities like Onam, Vishu and Christmas.
One of the members of the “I Love My KSRTC” team, Jithin Tom Mathew said that the group made it a point to get in touch with KSRTC officials with their suggestions to improve the service and the officials were only willing to cooperate.

The facebook group has more than 10,000 members and around 5,000 active members. Aiming at the hardcore KSRTC fans, the I Love My KSRTC Group, often pre-book all the seats in  KSRTC route buses to tourism spots.

“Recently we took a trip from Punaloor to Thenkashi via Thenmala and Aryankavu”, said Sankar, a member of the fan club. KSRTC fans from different parts of the state met at Kottarakkara and went to Punaloor, pre-booking all the seats in the route bus from the Kottarakkara depot. The group was first formed in Orkut and later migrated to Facebook during 2009. They first met up and had a trip together to Gavi and Kumily.

“Our motto is also to promote public transport, which has a lesser environmental damage,” said Jithin Tom Mathew. Now the team members get together and clean buses in almost all KSRTC depots across the state and the fan club is only increasing as their activities have caught the attention of their Facebook friends.