After a gap of many years, the Uttarakhand Rroadways have finally recruited 200 drivers. The recruitment of these drivers would help in better management of the fleet of the state roadways. The process of recruitment was delayed due to internal politics among different unions of the roadways. The General Manager Operations of the Uttarakhand Roadways, Deepak Jain told The Pioneer that the appointment letters to the selected candidates have been dispatched. He said that 160 out of 200 candidates have already joined the duty and rest others are expected to join soon. The new drivers are being appointed on a contractual basis by the roadways.
The Uttarakhand roadways had recently purchased 486 new buses to replace its ageing fleet. However due to severe shortage of drivers, the roadways administration was facing problems in operation of its fleet. The recruitment of new drivers is expected to increase the number of frequencies and efficiency of the fleet of roadways which at present has more than 1400 buses.
The Uttarakhand roadways released a recruitment advertisement for posts of drivers in the month of June last year for domiciled candidates of Uttarakhand registered in the employment exchanges of state. This pre- condition brought the two unions of Uttrakhand roadways into logger heads.
The Uttarakhand Roadways Sanyukt Parishad (URSP) which has a big following among the serving employees was of the view that posts like drivers and other class IV workers should be filled by only domiciled candidates However another union, the Uttaranchal Roadways Karmchari Union (URKU), which is represented by most of the contractual workers, pressed for the regularization of contractual workers before the new recruitment.