HRTC employees’ leave derails bus services

DHARAMSHALA: With a sizeable number of employees of Himachal Pradesh Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) having gone on leave, it has led to derailing of the bus services across the state due to which it has caused a great deal of inconvenience and difficulty to commuters travelling in the buses to various destinations in and outside the state.
The corporation runs its buses mostly on long-routes as local services are taken care of by the private operators.The Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) of HRTC employees which has launched the agitation demanding that the corporation should be converted into roadways, contract employees should be paid dearness allowance in addition to the basic pay, regularization of contract workers having completed eight years of service, duty to be fixed at eight hours, weekly offs, payment of arrears to the retired employees and jobs to be given on compassionate grounds without any delay.
The people in the various bus-stands of the state, including Dharamshala and Kangra, had to waiting for number of hours for the buses with about 2,500 drivers and conductors having gone on a leave for a week. The state road transport corporation could ill-afford the stopping of bus services as it was grappling very hard to overcome the increasing deficit having accumulated over the years due to losses incurred by it on account of mismanagement and in efficiency. On Sunday, hundreds of routes to various destinations within and outside the state were affected putting the commuters into a great deal of difficulty. The situation was not much different on Monday with the buses arriving late to ply on their routes.
Sarita, a commuter at the Kangra busstand, said that she could not go on Sunday to New Delhi as she got late due to delay in the arrival of the bus. Besides this, commuters in various other parts of the state had to face the brunt of the strike. JCC state secretary Umesh Sharma said that their agitation would continue till their demands were met.
HRTC MD Bharat Khera told TOI that situation would improve drastically in a day or two.
He said that since the transport services were different from other various sectors, the HRTC would ensure that all the buses should ply on their routes as per the stipulated timings.
About the demands of the employees of the HRTC, he said that three rounds of formal negotiations had been held in the last three days, including the latest talks held recently, adding that most of the demands had been met. He said that the bus services would become normal very soon.