The employees’ unions of transport corporations in the State began a State-wide strike urging the Government to fulfil their demands with some of them staying off work from Monday. Not a single bus would ply, they said.
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They held talks with Transport Minister S.S. Sivasankar and officials at the Secretariat. At the end of the talks, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) State president A. Soundararajan, accompanied by the leaders of trade unions, said the employees would go ahead with the strike as per plan since the government did not accept their demands.
Mr. Soundararajan said, “In the talks held today following our unions’ strike notice, the government told us that they were not able to accept any of the demands and would talk to us after Pongal. Such a response is totally unacceptable and not satisfying. We did not expect this from the government.”
The demands of the transport unions include the filling of vacancies, allocation in the State Budget to offset the deficit, increasing the dearness allowance of retired employees, which has been pending for the last 100 months, scrapping of a new pension scheme, immediate commencement of the 15th wage revision talks, and granting compassionate ground appointments.
