Kerala Assembly: Minister says Transport dept mulls pre-licence training in schools for Plus Two students

The Transport department is mulling an intervention in the school curriculum to provide pre-licence training to Plus Two higher secondary students, Kerala Minister for Transport C.P. John has said.

Discussions would be held in this regard with the General Education department, the Minister said in reply to questions in the Assembly on Tuesday on the matter of licences and services provided by the Motor Vehicles Department (MVD).

The Minister said the idea was to provide these students’ licences by the time they finish Plus Two (when they turn 18).

Nearly 1.5 lakh licences, including new ones and those renewed, were issued in a month. This came to 18 lakh a year, he said.

In reply to a query on discontinuation of Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) buses on many routes citing poor collection and in the wake of COVID-19, the Minister said the KSRTC had been asked to conduct a study on services discontinued during the pandemic so that these could be restarted. Many of the discontinued services were on routes that were profitable, the Minister pointed out.

On private bus crisis

On the crisis in the private bus sector in the wake of the launch of free bus travel scheme for women on ordinary buses of the KSRTC, the Minister said the government considered private bus operators as “investors” in public transport and therefore had reduced the tax on all India permit vehicles by 50%, as announced in the revised Budget. This resulted in a benefit of ₹50,000 to them a year.

He said the impact of the free bus travel scheme was not uniform across the State. Its impact was the most in areas where both the KSRTC and the private buses plied equally. In such areas, the collection of private buses had dipped by ₹1,500-₹2,500 a day. The government was apprised of the seriousness of the situation and would take necessary steps to address it, Mr. John said.

The Minister said a study would be conducted on the demand for increasing the staff strength of the MVD.

The government, he said, would try to improve facilities at RTO offices within a year using a percentage of the ₹8,773 crore estimated to be received by the department as tax in the revised Budget. Better integration of the RTO offices with the national-level network of the Union government and connecting them with e-challan was also planned.

On the long delays in obtaining driving licences, the Minister said urgent steps would be taken to study the matter and address it.