Conductors’ strike hits city bus service

Nagpur: City bus service in the city was partially affected on Tuesday following an indefinite strike called by bus conductors associated with Security and Intelligence Services (SIS) agency to press for their monthly wages. The agency officials blamed Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) for the salary default as civic body has not cleared their payment.
“The strike resulted into Aapli Bus service being affected on Pardi, Hingna and Defence routes,” said chairman of NMC transport committee Bunty Kukde. The service ran normally on other routes where Unity Infrastructure’s conductors were on duty.

“All 230-odd conductors went on strike affecting operations of 69 buses on various routes. Students and office-goers were among the worst hit,” said Kukde. “We have served a show-cause notice to the firm and we will recover operational loss from them,” he said.

SIS conductors, requesting anonymity, told TOI they were being paid their salaries very late every month and the agency also recovered penalties imposed by the NMC from their salary. The drivers were getting their salaries promptly by ninth of every month, they pointed out.

The agency had also collected security deposits from conductors estimated at around Rs 57 lakh. While it can collect Rs 6000 each the agency had taken between Rs 10,000 and Rs12,000 and also not provided any receipt, said sources.

Even though default charges have been levied on SIS and warnings issued to overcome the shortcomings, the former has not taken any remedial steps. The firm has also failed to deposit statutory payments like provident fund, ESI etc for conductors, sources said. SIS had also not paid any bonus to the conductors.

Kukde said termination notice had been served on the agency. “We are trying to hand over entire job to Unity Infrastructure,” he said.

TOI has been reporting that despite having two ticketing agencies—SIS and Unity Infrastructure— bus services remain affected almost daily. Due to unavailability of SIS conductors, NMC had to cancel 4,000 buses between January and November this year. NMC suffered a loss of over Rs 4 crore till mid-December this year on this account.

To make up for the absence of SIS conductors, transport department deputed conductors from Unity but it failed to streamline the service. On Tuesday, TOI found many buses were overcrowded. Commuters had to depend on autorickshaws too. There was heavy rush at Mor Bhavan bus stand in Sitabuldi and on bus shelters near Maharajbagh Zoo.