Bengaluru: UN employee denied receipt for Metro card

Bengaluru: Dr. Dominic. F. Dixon, an employee of the United Nations and Director of Academics at UNITAR, was not provided a receipt for the Metro card. Heavily involved in civil liberty and social justice causes, Dixon was at the Metro one day to purchase a smartcard for himself to help facilitate Metro travel.

Dixon says he gave Rs 550 to the BMRCL employee at the counter. The woman at the counter issued a receipt worth Rs500 in return. Being an anti-corruption campaigner, Dixon demanded that he be given a receipt for Rs 50 that was charged for the smartcard.

He was told that a receipt could not be provided for the Rs 50 as the system was foolproof and designed to issue only one receipt.

Dixon took up this issue with B.L. Yashavanth Chavan and wrote a detailed letter to him explaining his predicament. “I told him I was doing this on behalf of the public which uses the Metro on a daily basis,” said Dixon. “Although I did get an apology at the ground level!” added Dixon. He insisted on the receipt as he wanted to know where the money was going.

When contacted, Mr. B L Yashavanth Chavan, General Manager (O&M) of BMRCL cut the phone and refused to answer. BMRCL PRO Mr. Vasanth Rao too was unreachable.

According to his email reply to Dixon (a copy of which is with Deccan Chronicle), Chavan had stated, “Continuing my telephonic talk, I wish to inform you that as per the business rules, a receipt can be issued to the passengers on his/her request. This is done in the interest of Environment protection. The cost of the card is Rs 50 and the ‘added values’ in multiples of Rs 50 to a maximum of Rs 1,500 are also displayed under ticket types notified near ticket office machines at all stations. After a detailed inquiry, it is found that in your case, the transaction for the sale of Smart card was done first and the ‘add value’ for Rs 500 was done later. The system being foolproof, only the receipt could be generated for the last transaction and not for the earlier transaction of the sale of the card.  You were also shown the receipt generation of sale of card for Rs 50.”

After DC tried to contact Chavan and Vasanth Rao with no success, BMRCL wrote back to Dixon saying, “With reference to your complaint we would like to inform you that in your case the ticket operator has performed The ‘Card Sale’ and ‘Add-value’ as two separate transactions and hence the receipt could not be generated for the first transaction i.e., for card sale. The ticket operator could have performed both these transactions as a single one so that the receipt could have been given to you on request. As such all the ticket operators have been instructed to perform all such transactions as a single transaction so that a receipt can be generated as a single transaction and receipts are given to the commuter without putting them to any inconvenience. We thank you for bringing the matter to our notice. We require your support for providing better service in future.” Although relieved that his query had been answered, Dixon still felt quite peeved.