Kozhikode: KSRTC authorities have quietly ignored a directive issued just a month and a half ago, which explicitly stated that experienced, permanent drivers must be assigned to operate long-distance bus services. However, the driver of the KSRTC bus that met with an accident in Karnataka on Saturday was a temporary employee. Under current operational conditions, when an adequate number of permanent staff cannot be assigned to duty, temporary staff are routinely deployed for long-distance routes. Long-distance services departing from the Kozhikode depot at night, such as the Kozhikode–Mysuru and Kozhikode–Bengaluru routes, currently do not follow the Driver-cum-Conductor system. Consequently, the public transport corporation currently relies on more than 5,000 temporary employees, making it virtually impossible to run daily operations without them.