Telangana: RTC's ticketing machines print wrong time stamps
4,352 out of 18,217 machines were being utilised on no-conductor' buses.
Hyderabad: Due to lack of maintenance and scheduled servicing, the ticket issuing machines (TIM) installed in some RTC buses are providing tickets with irregular time stamps. The driver-conductors are having to manually correct the timings.
The machines were introduced in the year 2000 and the RTC extended the service in 2013 to many buses in the city.
An official said that RTC had 18,217 machines and of which 4,352 were being utilised on ‘no-conductor’ buses. “These machines provide analytics and other reports apart from issuing tickets,” the official said.
A conductor from the city said that the machines were hanging mid-operation, and were hard to use. “The keyboard has become hard and our fingers pain after punching out the tickets,” he said.
RTC Employees’ Union general secretary K. Raji Reddy said the problems were the outcome of lack of maintenance. “There is no proper servicing and the paper roll is not of good quality. The management is not ensuring the machines are repaired, but is taking action on conductors and drivers for errors done by the machines,” he said.