Bhubaneswar, October 19: The All Odisha Private Bus Owners’ Association on Thursday stuck to their call for an indefinite State-wide strike from Friday after talks with officials of Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) failed.
The association has been opposing running of state government’s buses from block headquarters to district headquarters under the State Government’s Location-Accessible Multimodal Initiative (LAccMI) programme.
Meanwhile, thousands of passengers on Thursday faced a harrowing time as they scrambled at various bus-stands across the State for tickets soon after the private bus owners announced to go for an indefinite strike from Friday morning.
“It was earlier agreed that LAccMi buses will run from gram panchayat headquarters to block headquarters. However, the State Government backed out from its promise and operated buses to block headquarters, thus causing serious losses to the private bus owners,” said association secretary Debendra Sahu.
“We deeply regret the hard decision to go for strike from tomorrow. There was no option left for us. We beg apology to the passengers for the inconveniences they suffered,” said Sahu.
In the morning, a meeting was convened between the delegation of OPBOA and the CMO to find out solutions to the Association’s demands. However, the meeting ended with no results.
On October 9, the private bus owners’ association had announced that it had put its strike scheduled for October 10 on hold till October 31. However, the association later changed its stance and decided to start the proposed indefinite strike from October 20.
