DTC strike: 600 buses go off roads

NEWDELHI: City’s commuters who use buses faced a tough time moving around Delhi on Monday as more than 600 Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) and cluster buses were forced off roads because of a strike called by its contractual workers.

Despite the Delhi government imposing the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) on DTC for six months, thousands of non-permanent staff of the DTC refused to report to work on Monday. Currently, DTC’S total staff strength of nearly 25,000 consists of 11,380 contractual workers.

The one-day agitation continued even as the government on Sunday assured that all its contractual workers would get increased salaries by October 31.

Hira Singh, who takes a bus from Rajghat depot to go to work at Kashmere Gate every day, said he failed to get even one bus in one-and-a-half hours. “I travel on this route every day and bus frequency has been just perfect. But, today I had to take a rickshaw to the ITO metro station and go by train from there,” he said.

The workers who staged protests at various DTC depots including those at Rajghat, Banda Bahadur Marg and Mayur Vihar Phase II demanded that the Delhi government begin a dialogue with unions of its various departments in order to imple- ment promises such as ‘equal pay for equal work’, ‘regularisation of contractual workers’ and ‘prohibiting privatisation of new buses in DTC’S fleet’.

In some depots such as Narela, the police detained protestors and released them in the evening. No one was arrested, even as it is allowed under ESMA.

“We are aware that the DTC has finally issued the order to revert to our old increased salaries in which we were paid ₹7.10 per kilometre. In case of breakdown of a bus, we used to get ₹648 per day which was then cut to ₹481 per day. This too will be restored in our October salary. But, this does not mean our demands are met,” said Rajesh Chopra, who is a driver and is also the general secretary of DTC Workers Unity Centre.

While the unions said nearly 50% of the 3,882 DTC buses did not ply on roads, DTC officials said that only about 600 buses were forced off the city roads due to lack of drivers. “Some contractual workers under the cluster model also joined, so another 70 cluster buses were also not plying. All in all, out of over 5,500 buses in the city, nearly 4,830 were plying on Monday,” a DTC official said.

“We have fulfilled the demand of the wages. But, other demands like equal pay and regularisation of staff have to be done at the cabinet level. So it is not in our hands,” the official said.