Bus services across Mysuru were affected for the second day on Saturday as the staff of Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation and other road transport corporations continued with their indefinite agitation despite the government’s appeal to them to end the strike in the interest of public.
The agitation has severely inconvenienced the passengers as the inter-city and intra-city services have come to a complete halt with the drivers and conductors sticking to their demand for considering them as government employees and extend benefits accordingly.
Despite the efforts by the officials here to persuade the striking staff, the drivers and conductors refused to get back to their duties.
With police escort, a few buses were operated on the Bengaluru route to clear the stranded passengers. In the wake of incidents of stone throwing on the buses on Friday, the KSRTC authorities sought police protection.
However, these services also came to a halt after sometime and the entire mofussil bus-stand wore a deserted look.
Some private buses operated services near the bus-stand, taking advantage of the situation. Even taxi operators took the advantage of the situation and ferried passengers to their destinations. Some passengers complained that the private operators demanded double the fare.
With no options available, the passengers paid the fare as demanded by the operators to reach their destinations. The private buses were packed to capacity.
The city police had deployed adequate bandobust in and around the bus-stand to prevent any untoward incidents and facilitate the operation of private buses.
Nearly 600-plus intra-city route buses went off the roads completely on Saturday after some of their buses were stoned on Friday. The Mysuru urban division of the KSRTC had operated nearly 70 per cent of the services on Friday and it stopped the operations after the incidents of stone throwing.
Buses belonging to Tamil Nadu and Kerala operated as usual. The passengers made use of these buses to reach their destinations. The strike also affected bus services in the neighbouring districts of Mandya, Kodagu and Chamarajanagar.
