CHENNAI: More than 250 employees of Chennai Metro Rail have threatened to intensify their strike after metro rail officials suspended seven employees for allegedly questioning the contract system wherein huge amount of public exchequer is being paid to middlemen contractors to hire employees.
An employee belonging to Chennai Metro Rail Employees Union told Express that Chennai Metro Rail is hiring employees on a contract basis at a monthly cost of Rs 65,000, while the permanent employees
were paid only Rs 25,000.
“What is more agonizing is that the contract employee gets only Rs 15,000 monthly salary. The seven employees questioned on why Rs 50,000 is being paid to the middlemen contractor. This incensed officials who suspended seven of our employees,” said one of the striking employees. “We are demanding that the suspension be revoked or else we will be intensifying the strike,” the employees said.Currently, the strike is being conducted in such a way so that metro rail operations don’t get affected, he said.
When Express contacted Chennai Metro Rail spokesman for his reaction, he said that the seven officials were suspended for they had gone against the policies of metro rail. The managing director of Chennai
Metro Rail could not be contacted. Interestingly, this is not the lone internal issue encountered by Chennai Metro. There had been other issues also. The employees have been seeking pay rise on par with executives and as per the third pay revision commission.
The employees, mostly technicians, junior engineers and station controllers, allege that the pay rise is not on par with the executives who got nearly 20 per cent pay rise.