'Trust me, we are very harsh on bus manufacturers'

Vijay Kumar Dev took over as DTC chairman and managing director on August 1, 2011. In 40 days, DTC has started showing improvement. Excerpts from an interview by Atul Mathur.

Vijay Kumar Dev took over as DTC chairman and managing director on August 1, 2011. In 40 days, DTC has started showing improvement. Excerpts from an interview:

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How do you plan to deal with multiple complaints of poor maintenance of low-floor buses?

A team made up of bus manufacturers and DTC checks every bus before it leaves the depot. The manufacturer is penalised Rs 4,000 per bus per day if less than promised number of buses ply. I have set up a team to check airconditioning and fans in red buses.

The old standard-floor buses are no better. Any plans to phase them out?

According to an affidavit given by the transport department in the High Court, Delhi needs 11,000 buses — 60% would be privately-run (cluster buses) and 40% would be DTC. Since cluster buses are taking some time, we are using standard floor buses. We will slowly phase out these buses. Meanwhile, I have asked my officers to refurbish 900-odd old buses, left out during the Commonwealth Games. This will be done in a month or so.

What else do you have in mind for better functioning of DTC?

Trust me, we are very harsh on bus manufacturers and do not tolerate any maintenance-related problem. To improve our system further, we are soon going to introduce electronic ticketing machines, which will plug revenue leakage. We are also in the process of complete computerisation of our depots.