Bhubaneswar: The Private Bus Owners Association has postponed the bus strike and will take a decision at a meeting to be held on October 30, said Association Secretary Debendra Sahu on Thursday.
Earlier today, the Association office bearers held two hours of discussion with Transport Minister Tukuni Sahu. However, the meeting could not reach at a consensus on the plying of government buses under the Location-Accessible Multimodal Initiative (LAccMI) scheme from Panchayats to district headquarters.
Soon after the meeting, Transport Minister Tukuni Sahu told media persons that there would be no bus strike now and the bus owners’ association would put up their demands in a written memorandum to the government by October 30.
The Minister said LAccMI is a revolutionary scheme aimed at providing public transport at the doorsteps to the rural people. She said the LAccMI service is introduced in interior areas where there is no bus service at all. The private bus operators, the Minister said, had welcomed the decision and did not oppose the scheme as a whole.
On the other hand, they demanded not to introduce the scheme at places where the private buses were plying.
Describing the meeting as neither a success nor a failure, Private Bus Owners Association Secretary Debendra Sahu said the demands of the Association had already been given to the government and clarified that the strike had not been called off but postponed till October 31.