Public transport services were affected in Haryana on Monday as the Roadways employees joined the two-day nationwide strike call given by a joint forum of the central trade unions to protest against the Centre’s alleged wrong policies that are affecting farmers, workers and people.
Commuters had to face a tough time as the bus services remained suspended at several depots of Haryana Roadways.
The roadways employees held protest at many depots in the state as part of the strike.
Sarbat Singh Punia, a leader of the joint front of 10 unions of roadways employees, said that “in all the depots bus services are suspended”.
“Only a few buses which are run under the kilometre scheme were operated in the morning in Narnaul, Jhajjar and Chandigarh depots by private operators. Our roadways employees are observing a complete strike,” he said.
He alleged that the BJP led Haryana government was not strengthening the Haryana Roadways fleet.
“This indicates their intent to promote privatisation of the transport services. There were 4,200 buses in the Haryana Roadways fleet about six years back, which have been reduced to 2,600 now and route permits are given to promote private buses. Haryana Roadways needs 10,000 buses in its fleet but the government is not paying heed,” he claimed.
In some districts, prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC were imposed to maintain law and order during the strike under which a ban has been imposed on the gathering of five or more persons in a 100-metre area of the bus stands, officials said.
Punia claimed that employees and workers of some other departments, including public sector banks and municipal bodies, are also participating in the nationwide strike.
Meanwhile, public transport buses were plying normally in neighbouring Punjab, officials said.
“Our bus services are running normally in Punjab,” an official of the State Transport Department said.
Naresh Gaur, Deputy General Secretary of Punjab Bank Employees Federation, however, said the employees of nationalised bank employees joined the strike and the banking services remained affected in Punjab.
Their demands include the scrapping of the labour codes, no privatisation of any form, scrapping of the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP), increased allocation of wages under MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and regularisation of contract workers, among others.
The central trade unions that are part of this joint forum are INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF and UTUC.