No sanitisation acts carried out by RTC

Staffers say that only daily morning cleaning is done

A week after instructions were issued to all regional managers of TSRTC to fully sanitise the fleet of RTC buses in the state, some RTC staffers say the most they have seen is the daily morning sweeping inside the vehicles to get rid of accumulated garbage.

On March 4, TSRTC’s executive director (operations) issued instructions on the steps to be taken to ensure that RTC buses do not become carriers of Novel Coronavirus that causes Covid-19 disease. The precautionary measures were to be implemented ‘immediately.’ The instructions did not mention how often the steps listed in the letter addressed to all the regional managers were to be repeated. The TSRTC says that it carries upwards of 100 lakh passengers a day.

While the instructions were exhaustive in terms of steps to be taken, an RTC conductor serving on a long distance route said on Thursday that “nothing of the sort is being done.”

The orders said that TSRTC regional managers were to ‘arrange’ to maintain cleanliness inside the buses ‘cleaning door handles, passenger grab rails, arm rests of seats with chlorine or alcohol based disinfectants.’

“We had no idea that we are also supposed to get masks for our protection,” a conductor said, when asked if this was being done as instructed. To the extent possible, ‘distribute masks to employees and also commuters’, the instructions said.

The RTC must also put up posters with information on Covid-19 and ways to prevent it, and make announcements at bus stations over the public address system. Neither was in evidence at the Jubilee Bus Station on Thursday.

Gate meetings with RTC employees to be addressed by doctors with help from district medical and health officers and the Indian Medical Association must be held. “I haven’t yet come across one or was I informed of any such meeting,” a staffer at JBS said.

● THE ORDERS said that TSRTC regional managers were to ‘arrange’ to maintain cleanliness inside the buses ‘cleaning door handles, passenger grab rails, arm rests of seats with chlorine or alcohol based disinfectants.