- Restrictions cause Rs. 20 m daily loss
By Skandha Gunasekara
The Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) is confident of bouncing back once the Covid19 outbreak has been contained, despite incurring a loss of Rs. 20 million daily.
“We were incurring heavy losses when Covid19 initially hit the country but we were able to make a good comeback and cut our losses greatly. But now again another cluster has emerged and we are facing difficulties,” SLTB Chairman Kingsley Ranawaka told
The Sunday Morning.
He said that the SLTB has no choice but to operate and the main issue is that there are hardly any commuters due to the fear of using public transport.
The Government this week called on buses to only carry passengers equivalent to the seating capacity.
Thereafter, private bus associations took a decision to reduce their operating fleet by half to reduce losses.
“We cannot ask people to pay more so we will not be increasing ticket prices, but we have reduced the number of buses to reduce losses,” Lanka Private Bus Owners’ Association President Gemunu Wijeratne told
The Sunday Morning.
