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Staff crunch, insufficient budget put brakes on Panvel transport body plan
The residents of Panvel city and its peripheries are not going to have better transport facilities anytime soon as the Panvel City Municipal Corporation (PCMC) is
The residents of Panvel city and its peripheries are not going to have better transport facilities anytime soon as the Panvel City Municipal Corporation (PCMC) is unable to start its own transport wing owing to lack of staff and insufficient funds.
Ganesh Deshmukh, commissioner of PCMC, said, “First of all, we don’t have enough staff in our corporation. Second, our budget is also not sufficient. Therefore, we don’t have any plan to start our own transport wing in the next one or two years.”
The PCMC recently requested the Navi Mumbai Municipal Transport (NMMT) to increase their services in the Panvel area till they start their own transport wing.
NMMT is the transport wing of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC).
The NMMT, however, said that they are unable to provide more services as they are not making any profit from the existing services in those areas.
Shirish Aradwad, general manager, NMMT said, “Our first priority is to provide better services in our own area. Only after that, we can think of our peripheries.”
“We are running buses on 22 routes in PCMC area. However, except for a few of them, we are not making profit. Thus we will not be able to run more buses in those areas,” he said.
“Till we start our own transport wing, the residents will have to manage with the existing buses run by NMMT and the state transport,” said another senior official from PCMC.
“We have requested them to increase their services in our area till our transport wing is started. But, we have not received any response from them till now,” he added
The PCMC’s jurisdiction includes 29 revenue villages of Panvel taluka including Rasayani and five nodes developed by Cidco (namely Taloja, Kharghar, Kalamboli, Kamothe and New Panvel) covering area of 110 sq km.
The population of this jurisdiction is around 9 lakh.
Sidharth Mane, 46, an activist from Panvel, said, “The population of PCMC area is constantly increasing owing to migration of people from different parts of the state. But, the transportation facilities in this area is not up to the mark. This has inconvenienced the residents.”
