Mumbai: The Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking is suffering a shortage of manpower and has decided to reinstate its retired personnel as ground booking officers.
In order to expand its services, the BEST management has confirmed the rolling out of 1,200 buses by March, on various routes of the city.But the cash-strapped undertaking does not have the manpower required to deal with its expanded service plans, since it has frozen recruitment.
At its last committee meeting in January, BEST committee chairman Anil Patankar had scrapped the proposal to hire 300 bus conductors on contract, after it was opposed by committee members.
“BEST presently is under huge debt, the recruitment process is frozen. To fill vacancies, we will soon rope in retired staffers,” said a senior BEST official.
The management is in the process of initiating the paperwork and the retired personnel will be given the work of conductors, as there is a shortage of them.
“We will give light duties to retired personnel. Most of them will be given the job of ground booking officers, where they will be deployed at a single bus stop and sell tickets to passengers because most of the buses being operated on feeder routes now are conductorless,” he informed.
The official also informed, staffers who had prematurely retired will be recalled into service.
“We will invite a number of staffers who are prematurely retired. We will also transfer a number of drivers who are colour-blind, to conductors’ positions,” said the BEST official. Meanwhile, the BEST workers’ union has warned of agitation against the implementation of this policy.
“BEST is trying to manipulate its former employees and trying to exploit them,” said JM Kahar, general secretary of the BEST Workers Union.
“The BMC allotted Rs1,500 crore as grant-in aid in the new civic budget. The undertaking doesn’t maintain any transparency on its recruitment policy, nor does it give us a clear picture of the funds,” he added.
Furthermore, he said, conductors who have been working for more than 15 years are eligible for promotion to the post of ticket inspectors. None of the conductors have received a promotion in the last few years.
