MADURAI: Over 3,000 employees who retired from state-run transport corporations like the TNSTC, SETC and MTC have not received their Superannuation benefits since April 2024. Of this, more than 700 employees who retired in the Madurai region of TNSTC.
Members of the TNSTC Employees Union, which is affiliated with the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), have been staging protest in front of eight state transport corporation depots, for the past 31 days.
Speaking to TNIE, TNSTC Employees Federation State Vice-President V Pitchai said that despite the protest, the government has not initiated any steps to disburse the dues. "Since April, more than 3,000 retired staff have not received their retirement benefits. In addition, over 95,000 retired employees have been waiting since January 2016 for 42% DA arrears," said Pitchai.
Criticizing the DMK of not honouring some of its key poll promises, he said "The DMK pledged timely disbursal of retirement benefits and implementation of a pension scheme for employees who joined service on or after April 4, 2023. Neither promise has been fulfilled," he said.
CITU Madurai district secretary R Lenin said public transport should be viewed as a public service rather than a profit-making organisation. He pointed out that while in opposition, the DMK had made 27 recommendations to the then AIADMK government in February 2018, including the creation of a Tamil Nadu State Corporations Central Pool Account and Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporations Co-ordinator Authority to provide stable funding and mitigate the operational losses.
"The DMK accused AIADMK of spending Rs 5,000 crore from employee contributions to manage losses. Now the DMK government has used Rs 15,000 crore from the same source. Nothing happened" Lenin said.
Despite repeated requests to announce a schedule for releasing the dues, Lenin said there has been no response from the government. "We are ready to call off protests if the government simply commits to a date for disbursal to the retired employees," he added.
An official from the TNSTC Madurai region said the issue falls under the state government's policy decision. TNIE's attempts to contact Transport Minister S S Sivasankar and Principal Secretary to the Transport Department Shunchonngam Jatak Chiru went in vain.