CITU state president Soundarrajan has warned that if the government does not take proper action on the issue of contract workers in the transport sector, they will take up protests like strike.
State secretary of the Marxist Communist Party Balakrishnan asked Chief Minister Stalin, who did not attend the Niti Aayog meeting because Tamil Nadu was ignored in the Union budget, how can he be a spectator when workers are deprived of their rights in Tamil Nadu.
The Chief Minister should learn from the failure of the previous AIADMK government. Balakrishnan, state secretary of the Marxist Communist Party, has said that he should undergo a self-examination once.
A seminar was held at the Raja Annamalai Forum in Chennai Broadway on behalf of the Tamil Nadu Government Transport Employees Association against privatization and contract system under the leadership of CITU State President Soundarrajan. In this, Communist Party of India State Secretary Balakrishnan, MDMK Treasurer Senthil Atiphan and others spoke.
Balakrishnan, State Secretary of the Marxist Communist Party, speaking on the occasion,
The Union State Governments are trying to bring contract workers into the privatized, liberal policy. Private sector is gradually coming into government and public sector. He said that no job is permanent anymore. He said that if we give everything to the private sector, the laborers will not be enjoying it.
Balakrishnan, state secretary of the Communist Party of Tamil Nadu, questioned whether if all the sectors are privatized in Tamil Nadu, the government will also be privatized. From Manmohan Singh to the Modi era, privatization is the right path for development.
If we look at who has benefited or benefited from this development, it is a profit for the corporates. Ambani is getting married at a cost of 5000 crores. This shows that the government is helping them in their development. He also warned that the situation of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will occur if the private sector continues to be implemented.
Chief Minister Stalin, who did not attend the Niti Aayog meeting as Tamil Nadu was neglected in the Union Budget, asked how he could be a spectator when the rights of workers in Tamil Nadu were being deprived, and the state secretary of the Marxist Communist Party, Balakrishnan.
He said that the government is not a commercial company, it has to provide services to make profit.
Balakrishnan said that the Chief Minister should learn from the failure of the previous AIADMK government and undergo a self-examination once. Balakrishnan said that there is no difference of opinion in protesting against the India Alliance in elections when other workers are deprived of their rights.
Speaking on the occasion, MDMK treasurer Senthil Atiphan said,
He said that the Madhyamik movement has the idea that private society should be abolished wherever it is found. Transport industry should not be seen as a profit making industry. Government should see it as a service. He said that action should be taken to solve the problem of transport workers immediately. He said that like the 12-hour work, Neyveli coal mine, private chauvinism should be defeated together in the transport sector.
Speaking to the media after the program, CITU State President Soundarrajan said,
The government is making many fundamental changes in the state transport corporations of Tamil Nadu which should not be made. This state is a state where buses can be operated widely in all parts of Tamil Nadu.
Nowhere else is there such extensive traffic. These transport corporations used to run 22,000 buses, now only 19000 buses are running. 3000 buses have been stopped. They said that it should be reduced by the Anna DMK government itself, it is a huge mistake and it is painful that this government is still implementing it.
Now we have less number of buses in Chennai city itself. Even if the buses announced by the government are released, there are no existing buses. So all these buses should be run. Two twenty thousand posts are vacant. Without you filling these 20,000 posts we cannot run these transport corporations effectively and therefore we continue to demand that you fill them.
The government is trying to fill in temporary workers. Permanent work means that permanent worker should be employed there. This is the Abolition of Contract Act. It is sad that a government and a government department is working against that law. We say don’t do it but the government is repeatedly trying to hire workers on contract basis by leaving tenders in many corporations and this is condemned by the government.
Now they are saying that we will provide 5000 buses in the name of mini bus. These mini buses will run 8 kilometers on our routes and then they will run where our bus does not exist. It will further increase our losses in a state where there is already a gap between revenue and expenditure. We do not know why the government refuses to accept this.
The government is trying to implement this without listening. When the consultation meeting was held for this purpose, the mini bus owners who are there now said that there is no merit in letting these mini buses go like this, so please give us a permit. Is mini bus good? Or is it necessary? What is important is that it must be run by the government. Mini buses can be powered by government batteries. We used to run many buses in Chennai itself and can run them too. We can divert our buses to other places to the extent that it is more convenient for the villages where it is better for the environment, this should be done by the government. The government has given the difference amount to the budget and this problem will be solved. Government should allocate money for it.
The government has now spent nearly Rs 15,000 crore on transport workers’ money. You can see if this government owes 15 thousand crores to the workers. How the government is running this administration. So a private center is a kind of private center where people are recruited through private sources and they pay money to private individuals and they send people here and they go to work. They buy the buses, that is, they buy the electric vehicles and give the bus to private individuals, they will drive the bus here and collect its income here. I will pay this much per kilometer for that bus.
All they can say now is that the Corporation will take whatever income they have given. We will face a huge loss in this. As we have already done in the electricity board, we will have to pay more than the income to the private sector. The government can and must run it.
Another thing is that they themselves will bring buses and in those buses the drivers will be their men and the conductors will be our men. After collection they put an account and say cross cut contract and that too is a private center. We see this as a privatizing arrangement so the government should abandon it. In this regard, the High Court gave a harsh verdict against the government in our case that it should not be done through tendering and contracting. This is a very bad plan and your implementation is anti-worker and anti-national. It will spoil the industrial peace and destroy the social justice theory of Tamil Nadu. There is no room for reservation here if the contract allows. So they canceled it. Appellate Government contends therein that this is our policy. It has to be understood that the government has abandoned all the policies it has been talking about so far.
So this is a very, very bad practice and I don’t know if our ministers know about it or not. I also don’t understand if it is happening at the officer level. So these should be abandoned immediately. It is for these things that the seminar was organized here.
We humbly request the Government to act in the manner in which we have already acted. Give the difference between budget and expenditure. I urge the government to give priority to central industries like transport and electricity in the budget and give central expenditure to the infrastructure industry.
Otherwise, the workers will hold protests against this. Your refusal to properly execute the work of the heirs, even the work of the children of the deceased, is deplorable and reprehensible. 109 months of pensioners have been arrears due to workers. You are refusing to give that too and they are standing empty handed for 22 months after retirement without getting their gratuity. So all these should be abandoned. I also insist on payment of these dues.
We have already made an announcement that it is a temporary arrangement due to the pressure we may be putting our way.
We will continue to press for the implementation of that declaration. And it cannot be said that the people of Tamil Nadu are aware of the depth of this problem. First of all, we are going to meet thousands of elected members like MLAs, MP Kal Corporation, etc. at the Panchayat level. This is what is going on in some districts through our Sangh and that is what is happening. How can the villages go without buses? How can free bus travel for women be cancelled? How can free bus travel be canceled for students? How will this affect it? We are going to tell those people that it is these private center effects that can bring about those effects.
Then we will take up a tough struggle with the support of the people when necessary. It can be done only through a strike, it can be done with the support of the people, if you allow private individuals for any reason, there is no social justice reservation, women are not free, students are not free, there is no free bus, and buses are not going to operate on non-income routes, so there are no buses in the villages, he said.
