BEST to provide maximum facilities to commuters: Bagalkar

Mumbai, Aug 4 (UNI) With a view to attracting the commuters in this competitive era, the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking has came out with several customer friendly schemes including 'Passes' on a par with Railway, PCOs, mobile bill drop box, Interactive Voice Responsive System (IVRS) and others.

Addressing reporters, BEST Committee Chairman Surendra Bagalkar said the scheme like daily passes will be launched on august 7 on the occasion of BEST din.

There are three categories like Daily, Monthly and Quarterly pass.

Under this scheme, commuters would be permitted to undertake unlimited journey in a day. The daily pass would be priced at Rs 40, Rs 35 and Rs 20 for adults, senior citizens and children respectively.

Mr Bagalkar said a monthly pass would also be introduced for the Bus routes and commuters can travel on all the routes irrespective of distance. All the bus passes would be Smartcard based.

He further said that the telephone instrument would be installed in the Buses, which would be on a Build, Own and Operate basis from this scheme BEST estimating revenue of Rs 15,000 per day.

About 15 electronic ticket issuing machines would be installed at major bus depots. With the close collaboration with Hutch, cell phone operator, bill drop boxes would be installed in the buses to facilitate bill payment of commuters. The BEST is also in the process of initiating a interactive voice responsive system (IVRS) to enable commuters to find out desired details of bus operation, he added.

Mr Bagalkar further informed that BEST has signed a Memorandum of Undertaking (MOU) with Indian Oil, which is supplying High Speed Diesel (HSD) to BEST for discount in the oil price. The oil companies have agreed to increase the discount due to which BEST is estimated to save Rs 3.8 crore in a year.

The Mahanagar Gas also agreed to give concession on CNG and the BEST will save Rs 42 lakh.

The BEST has also identified 10 depots across the city and planned to give the space to Mahanagar Gas for installation of Gas filling centres, he added.

To improve the behaviours of driver and conductors towards the passengers, the BEST has decided to give 'Yoga' training for them once in a week.

UNI ST PM RL PC1756