Koraput: Private bus owners’ associations in undivided Koraput went on a 24-hour strike on Monday opposing the LAccMI (Location Accessible Multimodal Initiative) scheme of the Odisha government. As a result, all private buses were off the road in Koraput, Malkangiri, Jeypore, and Nabarangpur districts.
According to Narendra Mohanty, coordinator of the private bus owners’ association, the 24-hour ‘chaka-bandh’ agitation will continue from 6:00 a.m. on Monday to 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday.
It is worth mentioning here that the state government is scheduled to launch the LAccMI scheme on Monday and the bus service will be provided from across the state to Bhubaneswar and Puri. “If the private bus owners are not included in the scheme and the government brings buses from other states, the private bus owners will suffer a lot and their employees will face many problems. If the government does not look into this immediately, the agitation will be intensified,” Mohanty said.
More than 300 buses on 200 routes in the undivided Koraput district are off the road today in support of the strike call by the association.
In its general body meeting held in Bhubaneswar on September 27, the All-Odisha Bus Owners’ Association resolved to go on an indefinite strike across the state from October 10.
