A major crisis for the daily commuters was averted after the staffers of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) called off their strike on Sunday. This came after a series of meetings between the staff council of the Delhi Metro, its top officials, senior officials from the Delhi Government and the secretary of the Ministry of Urban Development.
Following which, the DMRC issued a statement clearing that Delhi Metro services will run on time from Monday morning onwards.
DMRC chief spokesperson Anuj Dayal said, “The ongoing protest by DMRC’s non-executive employees was called off on Sunday after all the issues raised by the agitating employees were amicably settled following many rounds of meetings and deliberations with DMRC’s Managing Director Mangu Singh and other senior officials. In light of the above, the Delhi Metro services will continue as per schedule tomorrow (Monday).”
The non-executive staff, agitating since Friday, called off the protest after the corporation agreed to their demands including revised salary slabs.
The DMRC has around 9,000 non-executive staff who perform important duties of train operators, station in-charge, traffic controllers, technicians, maintenance and so on.
Now, the pay scales of non-executive staff in the grade of Rs 8000-14140 onwards shall be upgraded to the next higher grade in existence with the DMRC residency of service. The grade of Rs 13,500-25,520 and Rs 14,000-26,950 shall be merged. Apart from that, a new pay scale of Rs 20,600-46,500 shall be introduced which will be the apex level for non executive staff,” read the letter signed by the senior officers who attended the meeting.
Since Friday, the DMRC employees had been protesting by holding sit-ins at various platforms across the Delhi-NCR.
Earlier in the day, they had reportedly threatened to shut off all Metro services by not reporting to work on Monday.
“The issue was deliberated in detail on Saturday evening at a high-level meeting chaired by MoUD secretary DS Mishra and Delhi chief secretary MM Kutty with DMRC’s MD,” Dayal said.
At DMRC, the basic pay of non-executive staff varies from Rs 8,000 to Rs 18,500, while that of an executive staff member is above Rs 20,600. For over two years, protesters have been demanding that the slab of Rs 8,000 be done away with and the entry salary of non-executive employees be upgraded to Rs 10,170.