MADURAI: As the government has ordered the merging of the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation (Madurai) Limited with the TNSTC (Tirunelveli) Limited with an intention of improving the financial position of the companies, the transport employees are of an opinion that the merger will not improve their financial status unless the government extends assistance to the corporations.
The government had green-signalled the move through an order on Friday, based on the recommendation of a committee that was formed to study the feasibility of the merger.
It was in 2010 that the government bifurcated the TNSTC (Madurai) Limited and formed the TNSTC (Tirunelveli) Limited. Following the bifurcation, Madurai, Virudhunagar, Dindigul and Theni districts came under the Madurai Limited while Tirunelveli, Thoothukudi and Kanniyakumari districts were brought under the Tirunelveli Ltd.
What led to the recent reversal of the merger was the poor financial status of Tirunelveli unit. While discussing the financial position of the corporation to service the loans of Tamil Nadu Transport Development Finance Corporation Limited, during a Board meeting held on March 30, 2016, the Board of Directors of the Tirunelveli unit had suggested to request the government to explore the possibility of merging the unit with the Madurai unit.
Following the suggestion, the Managing Director of Tirunelveli unit requested the government to consider the possibility of the merger to improve the financial position and also to reduce the cost considerably.
Speaking to Express, the vice-president of the Tirunelveli Pokkuvarathu Tholilalargal Sangam, S Perumal, said that the reason for merger was that the Tirunelveli unit was not able to disperse the salary to employees. He said that while the monetary benefits of the retired employees had been dispersed in other transport corporations till the month of March, the Tirunelveli unit has still not dispersed the monetary benefits to the retired employees for December 2017.