Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) is in the heart of people of Kerala and 90% of the population rely on this public transport system. The people sincerely expect that this public corporation be managed effectively and efficiently by committed public servants.  For the last several years, the corporation was struggling to pay monthly salary to its employees and to its pensioners, primarily due to lack of income from its services.  The corporation continued to rely on the state government for financial support of an average of Rs 20-40 crores per month and the corporation’s debt continued to rise. In the absence of regular salary or pension, the staff and pensioners were struggling and there were reported incidents of pensioners taking their own lives.

It was indeed very important to initiate corrective measures to save this public corporation from destruction. Soon Mr Tomin Thachankary took on as the CMD, he started introducing several reforms, only to save this public corporation and its employees and its pensioners. His initiatives to reduce the expenditure and to increase the income are the effective way in any public or private sector undertakings.

His reforms helped the corporation to recover from its destruction, the average daily collection was increased to Rs 8.54 crore from its previous average of Rs 6.0 to 6.5 crore, which is impressive and remarkable achievement.  In addition there was another action plan developed to further increase the daily collection, which would have helped the Corporation to run its services in profit.  His initiatives to run electric buses, first time ever in any country were also praised not only by the local community but also by the international community. Further, most importantly the Corporation was able to pay its employees from its own revenue, for the first time in last 25 years. 

Mr Tomin Thachankary could achieve all these in less than 10 months’ time, the employees and their representative trade unions should have welcomed his reforms but instead they started plotting against him.  The Chief Minister has now removed him, allegedly only to impress the trade union leadership. Within three days of his removal, the trade union leadership is now reported to have interfered the routine administration and started rejecting his reforms.  If his reformative measures are not maintained, the Corporation will again plunge into more debts and would become burden for the state government. Therefore we request the Chief Minister of Kerala to immediately re-instate Mr Tomin Thachankary IPS as the Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of KSRTC