The Centre is trying to weaken the transport sector by bringing in the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Act. The new law will undermine the role of State Transport Undertakings and will be detrimental to the interests of both transport workers and owners, All India Road Transport Workers Federation (AIRTWF) vice president R. Lakhshmaiah and CITU State president Ch. Narasinga Rao have said.
At a media conference, here on Friday, they called for a united struggle by both workers and owners.
The AIRTWF conference will be held from June 4 to 6 at Kalabharathi in the city. On the inaugural day, a rally would be taken out from the railway station to the Gandhi statue, which would conclude in a public meeting.
They said 11 crore people, employed in the transport sector, would lose their job security. Apart from workers and owners, the new legislation would also have an adverse impact on the people. It would lead to foreign transport operators and Indian corporate companies having control over the transport sector.
They also said the Telugu Desam government was collecting additional tax on diesel and the Modi and Chandrababu Naidu governments were collecting heavy penalties, fines, challans and insurance and inconveniencing transport workers.
The Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Act was passed in the Lok Sabha but was pending in the Rajya Sabha as the CPI(M) members had insisted on a debate on it and other Opposition leaders had supported it.
They demanded payment of minimum wages to transport workers, ESI, PF and provision of job security. The national conference in Visakhapatnam would chalk out the future course of action against the new law. Around 1,000 delegates from all the 29 States in the country were expected to attend
Mr. Narasinga Rao said 1.4 lakh people were dying on roads in the country every year. Trauma care centres should be set up along the National Highways to minimise the incidence of accident deaths. Though a proposal was there for the past 10 years nothing was done so far.
He said taxi aggregators like Uber and Ola were being encouraged at the cost of small taxi operators. Measures like these would discourage people from relying on the public sector. He said advanced countries like the USA were highly subsidising the public sector transport companies to promote their use.
