AHMEDABAD: Not satisfied with the clarification offered by AMTS city
bus manufacturers on the recent sporadic fire incidents, municipal
commissioner Guruprasad Mohapatra has immediately ordered an audit of
all newly inducted city buses.

On Tuesday, Ahmedabad Municipal
Corporation (AMC) called officials from Tata, which manufactures
‘Marcopolo’ buses, for a safety review meeting and discussed on a wide
spectrum of technical issues.

Close to 200 buses will go off the road in phases for the safety checks. Pune-based Central Institute of Road Transport ( CIRT)
has been asked to send a team to conduct the safety audit of these
buses. Since January, five AMTS buses, two feeder buses used for
ferrying passengers from AMTS to BRTS route and four BRTS buses have
caught fire. Out of a total of 11 incidents till now, in seven, the
buses had fiber parts.

“We had specifically asked them about the
reasons for electric short circuit fires in Tata-Marcopolo buses. These
are new buses and should not catch fire and cause public fear. The
company officials claimed that the fires were primarily due to lack of
maintenance. However, we countered them by asking them as to why many
CNG buses that were bought prior to the recent Marcopolo buses never caught fire. The company officials had no credible explanation,” said Mohapatra.

When questioned about main reasons for fire in AMTS and BRTS buses, AMC
officials said that overheating of the engine, leakage of oil and CNG
gas and short-circuit have been the main reasons in such incidents. Poor
and infrequent maintenance of the buses were also cited as reasons for
this. The CNG bus fire on Naroda route and then again on Ashram road a
few days later can be cited as examples. Two years ago, Ahmedabad
Janmarg Limited had asked an expert from Delhi Transport Corporation to prepare a safety report on BRTS buses after a fire incident.

A senior AMC official added: “Generally, CNG buses anywhere in the
country heat up. It’s usual and requires care and timely maintenance.
But then we’ve six engineers from Tata who are present at workshops to
help us in trouble shooting. However, even these engineers couldn’t
anticipate these problems.”

The opposition in AMC has time and
again protested about deployment of such buses without proper inspection
and safety tests. AFES officials said that this year they have reported
eight fire from AMTS buses and two from BRTS buses so far. They also
proposed to have fire extinguishers in the bus as safety mechanism.