The administration of Uttarakhand roadways has warned that strict disciplinary action would be initiated against any strike and work boycott. The Uttaranchal Roadways Karamchari Union (URKU) has given a work boycott call for three days commencing from Friday.
The URKU has a major presence among the drivers and conductors of roadways and the three day strike call is sure to affect the operation of buses of state transport career. The MD of Uttarakhand Transport Corporation, Brijesh Kumar Sant told The Pioneer that a notice is issued to the association for taking back its work boycott call. He said that appropriate and harsh action would be taken against those participating in the work boycott call.
The divisional Secretary of the URKU, K P Singh said that talks with the authorities proved inconclusive and members of the association are determined about the work boycott. “We have informed the management about our plans of work boycott from September 16 to 19. Our organisation has more than 3500 members and most of them are drivers and conductors and all of them would not work on these three days,’’ he said.
The URKU is agitated over the fact that the MD of roadways has categorized the contractual workers of the roadways as workers of the outsource agency. It is significant as the cabinet sub committee had recently recommended that all contractual workers working for more than five years would be regularized. There are more than 2000 contractual/ outsource workers in the roadways most of which are drivers and conductors.
The state roadways have a fleet of about 1250 buses and more than 1.40 passengers use these buses daily.