S. Prasanna Kumar, president of the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation Employees Union, affiliated to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions, said that the severe shortage of manpower in Transport North Eastern Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NEKRTC) had overburdened the employees. He demanded that the government fill the vacancies as early as possible. He was addressing a media conference here on Saturday.
According to him, only 13,235 employees, including drivers and conductors, were functioning against the requirement of 18,714 for operating 3,750 scheduled busses.
“The staff crunch has overburdened the existing employees and caused diminished quality of services. The weekly off, casual leaves and sick leaves are not provided to employees due to shortage of manpower. The employees who go on leave without permission are ruthlessly suspended. The only way to address the issue is filling the vacant posts,” he said.
Change the rules
Pointing at the “so-called disciplinary measures”, Mr. Prasanna Kumar said that the higher-level officials harass the lower-level employees, particularly drivers and conductors, with stringent actions even for minor errors.
“Even if a passenger loses a ticket issued by the conductor, the officer considers it as not issued and not collected and will hold the conductor responsible and impose fines. The culture of imposing fines on employees is rampant in NEKRTC,” he said and demanded that these be altered. He also said that injustice was rampantly meted out on employees in calculating duty hours. “Even though an employee performs overtime duty for eight hours as per the requirement, only two hours overtime duty is entered in the log book,” he said. He demanded that the authorities to provide proper amenities such as toilets and restrooms at every bus stations for employees.
Conference
Mr. Prasanna Kumar announced that a conference of NEKRTC employees would be organised in Kalaburagi on April 9 for highlighting employees’ issues. A memorandum would also be submitted to the NEKRTC Managing Director, he added.
