Odisha’s Private Bus Owners Threaten Strike Against Govt’s LAccMI Scheme After Sept 27

Bhubaneswar: The private bus owners of Odisha have threatened to take the vehicles off the road if the state government fails to resolve the problems to be faced by them due to LAccMI scheme.

In a letter to State Transport Authority (STA), Debendra Sahu, secretary of the Odisha Private Bus Owners’ Association stated that the families of more than 14,000 employees of private buses will be affected by the government’s Location Accessible Multimodal Initiative (LAccMI) scheme.

“Though we are not against the scheme as it would benefit the people, we are concerned that the government was not concerned about the families of the bus employees whose livelihood would be affected. We are already hard pressed by Mo Bus service of CRUT in selected urban areas. The LAccMI scheme, which would extend bus services in rural areas, would further affect the income of over 8,000 private bus owners,” he said.

Sahu alleged that the government did not consider the problems to be faced by the private bus owners before announcing the scheme. After the association protested the decision, the government held several meetings with the bus owners in this regard, but no solution has been found, he added.

If the government failed to find a solution to the problems of routes and timing of the buses through discussion by September 27, the private bus owners would be forced to stop plying their vehicles, he said.

Under LAccMI scheme, the government plans to run buses from panchayats to blocks, blocks to district headquarters and from districts to state capital. The Cabinet also approved the scheme at its last meeting.