Divergent views of two biggest unions of Uttarakhand roadways on the issue of regularisation and recruitment of new drivers have created a situation of stalemate in the corporation. The Uttarakhand Roadways Sanyukt Parishad (URSP) which has a big following among the serving employees is of the view that the State Government should immediately start the stalled process of recruitment of drivers in the roadways. However another union, the Uttaranchal Roadways Karmchari Union (URKU), which is represented by most of the contractual workers, is pressing for the regularization of contractual workers. The cliché is that if the roadways go ahead with new recruitment of drives where only domiciled candidates are allowed to apply then it leaves little scope for regularization of contractual workers, 70 percent of whom are not domiciled residents of Uttarakhand. To press for its demand of regularisation of contractual workers the URKU started an indefinite strike from Thursday. On the other hand the URSP would undertake mass agitation at all depots on Friday in support of its demand of new recruitment of drivers.
The Uttarakhand roadways released a recruitment advertisement for 300 posts of drivers in the month of June this year for domiciled candidates of Uttarakhand registered in the employment exchanges of State. A total of 1710 candidates applied for the post out of which 450 candidates were found eligible. Before the recruitment could be completed it was stalled under pressure from URKU.
The general secretary of URSP, Ram Chandra Raturi said that all the States promote recruitment of local people in group III and IV posts. He said that there is a conspiracy to fill the vacant posts of drivers in roadways with candidates of Uttar Pradesh which the URSP would not allow to succeed. The third union, the Uttarakhand Roadways Employees Union (UREU) is of view that the stalled process of recruitment of drivers should start and all contractual workers should be absorbed in the state transport carrier. The general secretary of the UREU Ravi Pachori told The Pioneer that the roadways is facing acute shortage of drivers and the purchase of new buses has rendered many old buses useless in absence of drivers.