Bus employees to be trained as part of ‘Savari Giri Giri’

Kozhikode: Bus owners and employees in the district will be imparted training as part of implementation of the Savari Giri Giri project of the district administration. The training aims to make owners and employees well aware of the perspective of the project and imparts technical knowledge on the use of ticketing system using ticket machines.
The training will be for five days and will be organized at KDBOA Information Centre at New Bus Stand from March 14 to March 19.Bus employees can attend the sessions at their convenience on any of the five days.
Though the formal inauguration of Savari Giri Giri project, aimed at ensuring journey with dignity to students, was held on February 29, the students are yet to avail the facility as the bus employees needs to be trained on the new system.
"Many of the bus employees who are already using ticket machines can easily grasp the method of using smartcards for bus journey," said K Radhakrishnan, general secretary of bus operators' organization. The implementation of the scheme in rural areas is necessary to ensure 100% benefit to the targeted students, he added.
Buses carrying out services within the city limits are included in the first phase of the project. The plan is to expand the scheme to rural areas before the start of the next academic year. School students will benefit from the scheme in the initial phase.
The Savari Giri Giri scheme was announced in August 2015 to allow students to travel with dignity as many private bus employees have been showing reluctance to permit school-college students to travel on their buses pointing out that they would incur financial loss on accommodating students.
The Savari Giri Giri project aims to settle the issue by introducing a system to compensate the loss incurred by buses on accommodating more students by accepting contributions from the public. With the scheme, the amount deposited in a common account will be shared among the registered bus owners in accordance with the number of students boarding their bus.