The flash strike by wet-lease bus drivers is going from bad to worse. On the third consecutive day the strike called by drivers of wet lease operators of Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST), continued. Throughout the day there were 349 buses that didn’t complete the scheduled trips out of the total 275 scheduled turnout of buses. Not only did it affect the passengers but also the transport experts are questioning the whole arrangement of wet-lease operators.
As compared to May 18, when 308 buses did not complete the scheduled trips, the situation worsened on May 19 as not only did staff from another depot of Wadala joined the strike on Thursday; the total number of buses also went up. The wet lease drivers from Vikhroli, Bandra and Kurla are also on strike since day 1. The fifth depot of Colaba was least affected where too the staff from this particular wet-lease operator who are on strike; have drivers working and buses operating.
These are the bus depots from where the wet lease operator takes his fleet, whose staffs are on strike. Sources said that the staff especially drivers of a particular wet least operator is facing problem. "On Wednesday in total 349 buses operated on wet-lease were off road and couldn't complete their scheduled trips due to the strike. We ran 120 buses from our fleet," said Manoj Varade, spokesperson, BEST Undertaking.
From Wadala none of the 63 AC buses on wet lease left the depot premises in the first half while in the second; 19 buses stayed back. There were 60, 104 and 94 wet lease buses from Vikhroli, Bandra and Kurla depots that did not come out. “The situation was really bad as buses weren’t available. Many people going to Bandra Kurla Complex was facing difficulty in finding a bus,” said Kurla resident, Subhash Gupta.
On May 17, 163 wet lease buses were off-road. According to BEST authorities this particular wet lease operator has 275 buses in the fleet and of this 192 bus trips could not take place on Thursday. In less that a month, this is the fourth time that the drivers belonging to a section of wet lease bus operators, called for a sudden strike. This led to commotion as far as running of smooth bus services are concerned.
A V Shenoy, transport expert said: “The whole idea of going for wet lease was not only saving on capital expenditure but also ensuring that there is no recurrence of strike or protests from unions. The BEST administration must sternly tackle the issue of wet lease drivers going on strike which they should have mentioned in the contract clause itself. We had suggested that only buses should be introduced on wet-lease while drivers like conductors should have been part of BEST”.
These drivers were complaining about non-disbursement of salaries by the wet lease operator. They claim that the wet lease operator have not paid salaries for sometime now and so to show their displeasure they undertook this strike. The salaries range from Rs 18-22000 per month on an average that is paid to the drivers. They claim that provident fund is also not paid to them. The BEST officials said that a fine of at least Rs 5000 per bus which did not come on road, will be levied. This comes at a time when the BEST Undertaking has 3578 buses in its fleet out of which there are 1694 buses on wet lease.
