Why weren’t our buses on wheels last week?

A feeling of ambivalence was clearly seen in the faces of GCT ians on Thursday evening, as the State Government declared a public holiday on Friday. While the students were happy for the extra day of leave, they were equally concerned if they could make home earlier for the holidays, if at all, thanks to the strike carried out by the TNSTC employees. Fortunately, the strike was called off temporarily and the bus services returned to normal by Saturday.

While most of us assumed the strike was just carried out demanding an increase in salary, there was more to it. They had their following demands:

• Monthly salaries on par with the permanent State Government employees with Rs.19,500 as base pay and 2.57% as the multiplication factor.
• Clarification on the deductions made from salaries of existing employees towards insurance & PF which is yet to be deposited in their bank accounts.
• Release of terminal benefits of retired employees and removal of inequalities in the pay scale between administrative employees and drivers & conductors.

Most of the demands weren’t accepted by the Government and hence the strike has been temporarily called off, after 8 days of protest. TNSTC is an organisation that is incurring heavy losses yet still functioning. It will not be an exaggeration to say that the organisation is almost bankrupt. It is high time the Government bats a serious eye into this issue and saves this dilapidated organisation.

Though the demands of the workers and trade unions are genuine, carrying out protests in such a large scale is not at all acceptable. Nearly two crore people are directly or indirectly dependent on their services daily and it isn’t fair when they completely halt the services. Viewing the entire issue from a political perspective, it can be seen that such strikes haven’t occurred when a strong, sensible and unique person (you know who) was the head of the state, though the same problems prevailed even then. So we cannot deny the fact that the unions made use of the political scenario & brought down the entire state to a standstill. Complete shutdown of almost 32000 buses in the name of strike isn’t common even in Communist states/countries.

The Government also made immature decisions in handling the issue. I can’t understand where this idea of roping in temporary drivers and conductors came from. Not only does it put the life of commuters under risk, it also creates lots of chaos in the administrative routine. Coming to the long run, the present and the past Governments have to be equally blamed for the present condition of the organisation. The State Transport Department is making losses of approximately Rs.9.5 Crores daily. This is because the Government kept sanctioning various welfare schemes focusing on students, senior citizens and differently-abled persons, at the same time, didn’t revise the fares regularly.

Saravanan, a TNSTC conductor says, “If the Government sanctions free bus pass to the students, why can’t the Education Department bear the expenses?” in a TV interview. We cannot deny the fact that this argument has logic.

We, the commuters take pride in having the cheapest transport fares. But, somewhere at the bottom of our hearts, we know that the travel experience in these poor quality buses is terrible. We envy the KSRTC for operating VOLVO buses, but we don’t want them in our states. Because this question pops in our minds: “What if the fares are increased?” Our neighbouring states Kerala and Karnataka have revised their fares 8 and 15 times respectively since 2011, whereas in TN the final fare revision was in 2011. Our SETC buses are nowhere close to the express buses operated by the transport organisations of the neighbouring states in terms of quality and services. It is sad to see the second largest GDP contributor operating rickety buses.

If the State Government still hopes in the resurrection of this age old organisation, it has to implement a lot of reforms, with a revision in the bus fares being the top priority. Privatisation of the Transport department can also be considered, if the Government is not so keen on allocating too much funds. The Transport department has seven divisions, and they obviously generate uneven revenues. Granting them the freedom to revise the fares individually based on the business of the routes can also have a positive impact.  With all said, we must accept any revision of fares in the near future as an act of expression of support in the resurrection of this nostalgic organisation, which will always have a special place in our hearts!