Shimla: Irked over the statement of Transport Minister Bikram Singh who said that the Mandi Bus Accident occurred due to human error, the Himachal Transport Employee Joint Coordination Committee has demanded a judicial inquiry of the accident.
Terming the statement baseless, the president of the Committee, Samar Chauhan said that transport workers won’t tolerate baseless allegations against the driver.
“If accident had occurred due to human error, then the bus would have plunged into the river, however, the driver made every possible effort to save the bus and passengers when detected the technical fault,” said Chauhan.
He further said that in order to save the lives of passengers, the driver crashed the bus on the hill.
The Committee accused the transport minister of presenting false figures of staff and spare parts in the workshop.
“According to the norms, there should be 4,690 technical workers for the maintenance of 3,350 buses. However, at present only 1,800 posts of the technical class have been filled including Peace Meal employees” he said.
“On what basis is the Minister denying the shortage of technical staff” he added.
He said that the Corporation owes crores of rupees to a firm that supplies spare parts due to which such firms refuse to supply spare parts to the corporation from time to time.
“As a result, there is always a shortage of spare parts. There is no space to park buses in workshops to repair the buses” he said.
“It would have been better if the minister would have come up with a policy to improve the administration instead of hiding the shortcomings of the management” he added.
