Kerala bus strike: KSRTC services affected today after management fails to meet demands

Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 23: The Kerala State Transport Employees Sangh (KSTES) and the Indian National Trade Union Congress-affiliated Transport Democratic Federation (TDF) are on Tuesday observing a 24-hour strike in Kerala.

It can be seen that due to the shutdown, the KSRTC services remain disrupted across the state today.

On Monday, the TDF and KSTES had met KSRTC chairman and managing director Biju Prabhakar as directed by Transport Minister AK Saseendran. After the meeting, both the unions said that since the management had failed to arrive at a favourable decision as regards their demands, they were going ahead with the 24-hour strike.

TDF's R Ayyappan, K Gopakumar, R Sasidharan, and K Ajayakumar, and KSTES' KL Rajesh, S Ajayakumar, GK Ajith, and TP Vijayan attended the meeting with Prabhakar.

The unions' demands are:

a. Withdrawal of the decision to float KSRTC-SWIFT
b. End to punitive transfers
c. Disbursal of nine instalments of Dearness Allowance
d. Revision of the present salary
e. Government takeover of pension liability
f. A revival of the dying-in-harness scheme

As per TDF working president R Sasidharan, "the KSRTC-SWIFT will destroy the KSRTC. The employees are drawing salaries of 2012 and the management is not willing to initiate even preliminary talks on wage revision."

Meanwhile, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions-affiliated Kerala State Road Transport Employees Association (KSRTEA) dubbed the strike as politically motivated and stayed away from participating in the strike. The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) has also not joined the strike.