Soon in Chennai city there might be less MTC bus services
Posted on: 11/Dec/2018 10:12:42 AM
MTC or Metropolitan Transport Corporation is operating the bus services in the city of Chennai and many people use these MTC bus services is well known. The sensational piece of news is MTC bus services in the Chennai city would suffer a setback with MTC banning overtime for workers during Sundays and holidays. MTC is also restricting the second duty for the drivers and conductors.
It is now said that by the new regulations MTC would be able to curb the malpractice in registering the overtime and allocating the second duty at the depots. It is known that these two increases the operational expenses of the transport corporation. Soon this could result in the cancellation of bus services in the city of Chennai as majority of bus depots are understaffed. To operate buses, about 100 to 150 conductors and drivers are engaged in the second duty. This was as per the official sources. There are bus depots in places like Saidapet, Anna Nagar, Koyambedu and Broadway is well known. It is now brought out that major depots in the above mentioned places are short of staffs and depend on the second duty workers in the evening hours of time.
President of State Transport Employee Union (CITU), Mr. Balakrishnan, spoke about how the restrictions in additional duty and overtime to the conductors and drivers would result in the cancellation of the MTC bus services. Mr. Natarajan, who is the treasurers of the Labour Progressive Federation or LPF, expressed his thoughts. He spoke about how until a decade back, second duty was given to the workers occasionally. He threw light about the delay in the recruitment that has reduced the number of workers. He then added that this resulted in increase in the number of workers engaged in the second duty of operating MTC buses and the number is more than 150 now. He explained how the workers close to the influential trade union leaders got huge benefits as they got the additional work. Mr. Natarajan expressed his unhappiness regarding the lack of appointment of new workers and said while 40 to 50 workers retire every month, there have been no new recruitments in the last 29 months. He finally spoke about how MTC’s intention was to reduce the bus services.
Managing director of MTC, Mr. Anbhu Abraham, spoke about how MTC workers were given overtime incentive of Rs 60 to Rs 80 per hour when their working hours exceeds 8 hours in a day due to the heavy traffic. He added that during the weekend days the most of the MTC buses reach the depots well before their scheduled time. He revealed that the depot managers were advised to cut overtime hours during holidays and Sundays etc. By this Rs 20000 additional expenses could be saved per day. One important piece of information is depots have been asked to reduce the second duty and adhere to the schedule. It must be taken into account that there would not be any reduction of MTC buses in any route and time schedule of buses has been enforced now.
