Thousands of commuters were stranded on Sunday across Haryana and other neighbouring States, including Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, with Haryana Roadways employees continuing their strike for the second day.
The strike is called against the State Government’s move to grant 3,519 routes to the private bus operators in Haryana. Though Haryana Transport Minister Aftab Ahmed held talks with leaders of Talmel Committee — a joint front of different State roadways employees unions at Karnal yet it couldn’t reach a consensus on the issue.
This is a third such strike by State Roadways employees including drivers, conductors and other employees of depots and workshops. Earlier, these Roadways employees had halt the buses services on November 13 and 14 last year on the call by two major employees organisations — Sarv Karamchari Sangh and Haryana Karamchari Mahasangh — and second strike took place on January 20 this year for four days.
Haryana Roadways has a fleet of over 3,900 buses which ferry nearly one million passengers daily. And, there is nearly 19,000 roadways staff in the State. Hundreds of bus drivers on Sunday didn’t ply their buses from depots in Chandigarh, Kaithal, Hisar, Yamunanagar, Panipat, Kurukshetra, Rohtak, Sirsa, Rewari, Gurgaon and other places joining protest dharna and raised slogans against Bhupinder Singh Hooda Government.
The business community, who had planned to travel to Delhi, Panipat or Gurgaon for business engagements, had to either postpone their plan or shell four times more money to hire private taxis. last year, the Haryana Government had decided to allot 3,519 bus permits to the private bus operators under new Stage Carriage Scheme 2013. The State Government had also said that these permits would be given to private players on those routes, which are not used by present roadways buses, but roadways employees are considering it as malafide intention of the State Government.
Sarbat Singh Punia, president of Haryana Roadways Workers Union reiterated that when the people of the State are satisfied with the existing State Transport buses, what is the need to introduce parallel private bus operators’ set up hereIJ “The State Government neither wants to fill up the vacant posts of transport department, which are lying vacant for more than a decade, nor they want to strengthen the infrastructure to provide better facilities to the public,” alleged Punia.
When the State Assembly Elections are near, the ruling Government wants to allot more than three thousand routes to their well-wishers — private bus operators to provide them additional benefit, which is absolutely wrong, alleged Dalbir Nehra, member of Talmel Committee. He added that all unions demand cancellation of this anti-people and anti-employees policy with immediate effect, till then strike would continue, added Nehra.
The roadways employees have also given an ultimatum for ten days to the State Government to fulfill their demands, or else they would be forced to intensify their protest. As per the information from Haryana Transport department, there are around 3,900 Haryana roadways buses in the State and each bus generates around Rs 10,000 per day for the State exchequer. The State Government is likely to bear around Rs 3.9 crore per day revenue loss due to the strike.