KOCHI: The Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) would conduct services on Wednesday despite the nation-wide general strike called by the coalition of 10 trade unions, State Transport Minister K B Ganesh Kumar said, a claim rejected by the CITU, which supports the Bharat Bandh.
"No KSRTC employee has given any strike notice so far. The buses will ply tomorrow. I hope the staff will be exempted, and they are not in a position to strike as well. In fact the KSRTC staff are happy with the current style of functioning. They now get their salaries on time, their health issues are being addressed. Even the last time when they called a strike, only 6 per cent of the employees had participated in it," Ganesh Kumar told reporters at Muhamma.
However, CITU State Vice President T P Ramakrishnan was quick to deny the same, saying that the KSRTC Employees Association (CITU) will definitely participate in the strike.
"The Minister's claim is false. We've already given the strike notice to the Managing Director's office. It's not at the Minister's office that the same should be given," Ramakrishnan told TNIE.
They claimed that the KSRTC services would be severely affected as more than half the employees belong to the union. "CITU is the official employees union of the KSRTC, representing over half of the total 25, 000 KSRTC employees," he added.
Earlier, Ganesh Kumar said the state government would not heed to the demands of the striking private bus operators.
"They have raised demands which are against the people, and hence the government can't accept them. One demand is the increase in student travel fares. Though we've prepared a report on the same, any decision on this front can be taken only after holding discussions with the student unions," he told reporters.
"The other demands include giving long-distance permits (over 140 km) limitlessly, taking away the mandatory provision of police clearance for the crew, and exempting from the provisions of fitting cameras and GPS machines in buses. All these are unfair demands and against the interest of the public," he pointed out.