BEST

Trimax IT Infrastructures and Services Ltd

ETIMs

ticketing system

BMC chief

Ajoy Mehta

Company says machines’ life had expired and were beyond repairs.Thehas suffered huge losses on account of faulty ticketing machines, and now the BMC has directed the transport undertaking to recover Rs 212 crore from the company that was tasked with operating the machines.The company,, which was given the contract to design and handle ticket collection through electronic ticket issuing machines (), on its part claimed that the life of the machines bought in 2010 had expired and that they were now beyond any repairs.The BMC’s municipal audit department after reviewing the BEST’s contract with Trimax said that the transport undertaking had lost around Rs 212 crore due to faulty electronic ticketing machines. The audit department claimed that as per the contract, the company has to pay Rs 500 per day per faulty machine. The report claims that machines did not work on at least 662 days since the contract was awarded.Over the last six months, the BEST’shas collapsed with machines malfunctioning and the BEST messing up its tender process to get a new ticketing system in p[ace. The undertaking’s administration has also been at loggerheads with the Shiv Sena-led BEST panel over key ticketing contracts.Mumbai Mirror had in February this year reported that the expired ETIMs being used by BEST buses in the city were giving trouble to not only the conductors but also the passengers. The machines were introduced around eight years ago and most of them have crossed their codal life (the normal working life of a machine), but are still being used by conductors.According to BEST officials, about 9,500 such machines are currently in use but more than 70 per cent of them are faulty. This, at a time when the undertaking has been trying to do away with paper tickets.Only about 400 machines are new as they were introduced late last year. The officials said that the contract with the suppliers for these machines had expired in 2016 but the BEST kept extending the contract with the company. The BEST administration’s latest bid to extend the contract was rejected by the BEST panel last month.In November 2016, the BEST had renewed its contract with Trimax to purchase ETIMs, but later BEST General Manager Surendra Bagde decided to go back to issuing paper tickets, saying the contract was riddled with “irregularities”.Bagde, who was appointed the BEST general manager in May 2017, submitted an exhaustive report to the, listing the reasons for scrapping the Rs 108-crore contract with Trimax, which was renewed for a five-year period in November 2016.Bagde said the contract was “tailor-made to suit certain suppliers”, and that the tender specifications did not follow the government specifications for the national common mobility card for ETIM specifications”. The report further said the prequalification criteria for contractors restricted other firms from bidding, and that the BEST had “restricted competition” to ensure Trimax bagged the contract. But months later, the BEST decided to give Trimax a six month extension for its old 2010 contract.“I have asked the BEST to recover the money lost from the concerned company as per the audit report,” Municipal Commissioner Ajoy Mehta told Mumbai Mirror.Mehta has also directed the BEST to immediately seize the deposit of around Rs 6 crore that the company paid while bidding for the contract.Trimax officials said that the contract period of the machines had already expired. “We have not received any recovery notice or demand letter from the BEST so far. We have made it clear many times that the machines we supplied in 2010 are no longer repairable and their life is over. They will have to be replaced. We were given a new contract in November but then asked to stop the supply of the new machines when new BEST GM Surendra Bagde took over,” the official said.