The district administration has begun the process of hiring vehicles to move men and machinery to polling booths across the district, with less than two weeks to go for elections to the ZPTCs/MPTCs as well as the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation.
A total of 772 vehicles, including 272 cars, 258 jeeps, 199 buses, 35 mini-buses and eight mini-trucks, are said to be required for conducting the ZPTC/MPTC elections in the four Revenue divisions of Anakapalle, Narsipatnam, Paderu and Visakhapatnam.
There is no dearth of vehicles as there are several travel agencies in the city and the district. However, it remains to be seen whether the travel operators are willing to rent out their vehicles to polling officials as they reportedly faced an unsavoury experience in the 2019 Assembly and General Elections, with payments getting delayed.
The operators said that they were also forced to ply their vehicles for far lesser rates than the prevailing market rates.
“It is a known fact that government rates are far below the prevailing market rate for hiring vehicles. We agree to the reduced rates for fear of losing their business. The bills submitted by different travel operators who had given their vehicles for hire during the 2019 General Elections were cleared only in December. Apart from the undue delay, we had to accept the bills with a 30% cut,” a proprietor of a travel agency, requesting anonymity, told The Hindu.
In normal practice, when a company or an individual hires a cab, a certain amount is paid to the driver as a daily allowance (usually ₹100 a day) apart from meeting the driver’s food expenses. Drivers of cabs hired for election duties are not given these allowances, it is learnt.
There is a rush of State-level officials and politicians leaders visiting Visakhapatnam city, even as it is yet to officially become the Executive capital of the State. Vehicles are being hired for the visits of dignitaries but the bills are not being cleared promptly, sources said.
Travel operators said that if the problem of delayed payments is not addressed and streamlining of the payment of bills is not done now, hiring of vehicles could turn out to be a major problem in the future.
