KATHMANDU, SEP 26 --Makalu Yatayat , one of the major transport operators providing services from Kathmandu to eastern parts of the country, has been allegedly receiving advance ticket bookings in “a suspicious way”. The Department of Transport Management has directed the company to give clarification regarding the advance reservations on Thursday.
The suspicious ticketing was revealed after a monitoring team, comprising of officials from the department and police, on Wednesday inspected the head office of Makalu Yatayat , located at Kalanki.
The inspection team has also taken copies, detailing the advance ticketing, for further investigation. “The operators were found reserving 6-20 tickets under a single name, which is dubious,” said Baikuntha Sapkota, inspection officer of the department. “To give an example, Chandra Mani Guragain is issued 20 tickets in advance for Dashain.”
Based on the complaints of customers not receiving tickets, the department had been closely surveying Makalu Yatayat for the last couple of days. And, on Wednesday, the inspection was carried out in the company’s head office. The company has around a dozen buses that service ten different routes to eastern Nepal from the capital.
“We have asked concerned company representatives to be present for the clarification on Thursday,” said Sapkota. He added that the trend of the booking, which was received before the formal announcement for the tickets, had indicated that the company reserved the tickets for black market sales.
Shree Prasad Sharma, a promoter of Makalu Yatayat and senior vice president of the Federation Nepalese National Transport Entrepreneurs, said that he was not aware of the issue. Mukti KC, spokesperson of the department said that they would first investigate the ticketing of the company and take action as per law if found guilty.
The department, in coordination with police, has been carrying out inspections to help customers get tickets easily, discourage ticket hoarding and black market sales when demand is high for the Dashain rush. The department officials said that compared to previous years, complaints of ticket unavailability and black marketing were less this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment