MADURAI: While the TNSTC is said to be reeling under a debt of Rs 35,000 crore, it is allegedly wasting crores in salaries for idle drivers and conductors belonging to a powerful trade union. On the other hand, it denies retirement benefits to former staff citing financial crunch.
TNSTC’s Madurai region alone is wasting more than Rs 60 lakh per month on salaries to 180 drivers and conductors, most of whom belong to this trade union and who are allegedly doing personal work, including business, during working hours.
“These people are given four sets of uniform every year; Rs 20,000 is spent every month as washing allowance for them. Madurai has been losing Rs 2.50 lakh per day as 10,000 km of transportation is cut down daily because of the workers’ idle condition, which seems to have administrative support,” claimed R Vasudevan, General Secretary of Arasu Pokkuvarathu Madurai Thozhilalar Sangam.
According to an RTI reply received by V Pitchai, vice president of the Sangam, the drivers and conductors, are given office duty while there is a shortage of workers to run the buses, which is in violation of norms.
Asked about the description of the role of office work allotted to drivers and conductors concerned, the TNSTC Public Information Officer simply mentioned the names of bus stands in the region.
Express visited a few mentioned in the RTI to see the workers on duty but was shocked to find them not available. Even more shocking was the fact that some of the office work that could be performed only by specialised people had been allotted to drivers and conductors. For instance, according to the reply, the work of the EDP section that took care of designing systems and programmes, maintaining computers, data files and records, and the legal section that took care of issues related to labour laws, accidents, criminal cases and civil suits were allotted to them as “office work”.
Other tasks allotted to the drivers and conductors included revenue clerk, computer audit, statistics, admin, canteen in-charge and even conducting “eye tests”. On duty (OD) has been allotted without reasons being mentioned. Office bearers of a few associations of TNSTC said that the government had given OD facility to the office bearers of around 16 associations in the belief that they would work for the welfare of the employees. Unfortunately, it appears that the facility is being grossly misused.
“A Chennai-based office bearer of a letter pad association got his son an OD, in violation of rules. Another person sold his association’s OD for Rs 1.6 lakh to a worker. This kind of malpractice has led many workers to believe that the OD facility may be bought,” they alleged.