With the corona epidemic, the country’s economy and industry collapsed. One of the major industries that collapsed there was the private bus industry. During the first Covid wave as well as the second Covid wave, bus owners as well as the employees who worked on those buses faced severe economic hardships.
Therefore, the President of the Private Passenger Bus Owners’ Association Gemunu Wijeratne recently requested the government to increase the average bus fare by 50 percent in order to operate buses in the current situation. He had said that it was a loss to carry a bus while maintaining a distance of one meter. They also recently submitted a 10 point proposal to the National Transport Commission to increase bus fares by 1.5 on luxury buses.
Meanwhile, the government has given permission to increase the bus fare by 1.2 times for the number of seats only, depending on the risk of the corona virus spreading from midnight yesterday (10).
Accordingly, the minimum bus fare will be increased to 14 rupees. The National Transport Commission (NTC) has also approved an increase of 1.5 times the average bus fare in cases where only 50% of the seats have to be used for passenger transport. At the same time, a Covid transport policy was unveiled yesterday. Here is how bus fares should be increased and how buses should be run in the face of the epidemic, the behavior of passengers is mentioned here.