Continuing the agitation against the Haryana Government’s decision to hire 700 private buses, the roadways employees’ unions on Friday announced to extend their strike till October 22 even as the stir entered fourth day causing inconvenience to lakhs of commuters.
Protesting since October 16, the roadways employees’ unions had on Wednesday announced the extension of their strike by another two days and decided to further extend it by another 72 hours on Friday, accusing the Haryana Government of taking anti-employees decisions.
Despite the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) being in force and the State Government ordering suspension of several workers in the past three days, the roadways employees have threatened to continue their strike till the government withdraws its decision to hire 700 private buses.
While talking to the mediapersons, Chief Minister Manohar Lal said that roadways employees’ union leaders have a right to raise issues pertaining to the workers, but not to interfere in decisions related to state policies.
He said that the decision to introduce 700 private buses is a policy matter and will be not withdrawn.
“As far as employees issues are concerned they can raise these, but they should not interfere in government's policy matters,” he added.
The employees unions have accused the Haryana Government of opening the route to complete privatisation of the Haryana Roadways with its decision to hire 700 private buses.
“Through its move to introduce over 700 private buses, the State Government wants to open the doors for complete privatisation of the roadways," alleged state president of Sarv Karamchari Sangh Dharambir Phogat.
He said the government has remained adamant on its stance. They have not initiated any talks with the striking employees because they are not concerned about public welfare.
We understand inconvenience being caused to public, but the government is to be blamed for the strike. They have shown apathetic attitude and left us with no choice. Now, we have been forced to extend our strike by 72 hours, up till October 22, Phogat added.
For the fourth consecutive day, the roadways buses remained off roads on Friday, when the state was celebrating the occasion of Dussehra.
The State Government plied buses, mainly on short routes, by taking services of drivers and conductors from other government departments including the police.
Policemen in uniform have also been driving the roadways buses for the past two days. The authorities also hired buses from educational institutions and pressed these into service on several short distance routes throughout the state.
A day before, the government had decided to employ the services of buses of private schools, polytechnics, engineering colleges, nursing colleges, other education institutions, factories and other companies across the state from Friday to Sunday. It was decided to pay Rs 30 per km for their services.
The State Government has also decided to make immediate appointment of 930 conductors and 500 drivers. The Transport officials have said that the ongoing strike is causing a loss of around Rs 8-9 crore to the state roadways every day.
Justifying move to introduce 700 private buses, the government has maintained that the Haryana Roadways at present has only 4,100 buses. Given the demand, the state needs 15,000 buses to cater to the population of over 2.5 crore.
The government has claimed that roping in private buses on public-private partnership (PPP) mode is in employees' interest.
There are about 19,000 employees in Haryana Roadways, which has a fleet of more than 4000 buses in which nearly 12 lakh passengers travel daily.
private operators will run new buses and have their own drivers, the conductors will be employees of the Haryana Roadways, who will submit the receipts to the government.
Notably, Haryana Government had on August 30 imposed ESMA to prevent the one-day strike of roadways unions from taking place on September 5. Following ESMA enforcement, the strike call given by roadways unions had fizzled out.
Earlier on August 7 also, the commuters were inconvenienced when roadways’ employees had taken part in a nationwide strike for the amendments to the Motor Vehicle Act.
