CMRL restores services, 2 staff blamed for system malfunction

Passengers bore the brunt of the flash strike by a section of non-executive permanent employees protesting the termination of eight workers for forming a trade union since Monday evening. The strike led to technical glitches which initially disrupted services. On Tuesday morning, the CMRL announced the cancellation of all the inter corridor train services from Central to Airport.

“Inter corridor train operation between Central to Airport has successfully restored at 01.30 pm today (30-04-2019). All metro train services are running as per schedule,” the CMRL tweeted.

Apologising for the inconvenience caused, Chennai Metro said, “It has been identified that two of our CMRL non-executive employees made the automatic signalling system to malfunction on Monday late evening.”

Manhandling of senior CMRL officials by the protesting employees was also reported on Monday. S Satheesh Prabhu, joint general manager (RSO) filed a complaint with the Koyambedu (K10) police station against 18 O and M employees for attacking him at the operation control centre (OCC), CMRL office on Monday, which led to interruption of metro services, created inconvenience to the passengers and financial loss to the CMRL. “I kindly request you to initiate action against the employees for disrupting the services,” he said.

Despite the restoration of services, passengers complained that the frequency of trains was far less than usual on Tuesday evening. “Normally, there will be a train to Eekatuthangal every five to six minutes. Today, we had to wait for more than 15 to 20 minutes,” said Dhanapal, an IT company employee. Several passengers took to social media to air their plight.

“Crowd at Meenambakkam Metro due to strikes. All services to Central Metro is stopped. Such strikes in essential services cause inconvenience to citizens given that the patronage just started to pick up pace. The government should take action,” tweeted Ajay Yeshwanth.

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Tripartite talk between Chennai Metro Rail management, striking permanent non-executive employees and labour department ended inconclusively over the issue of reinstating eight workers whose services were terminated.

The permanent employees went on an indefinite strike on Monday evening demanding CMRL to reinstate the employees who were sacked for forming a trade union.

The Metro Rail remained firm on its stand over terminating the employees even after the assistant labour commissioner (ALC) advised that the decision could be kept in abeyance until the disputes are resolved.

“Even though we did not fully agree with the ALC advice, we accepted it reluctantly to call off the strike considering the situation of passengers. However, the management did not accept the advice. It will only show the management’s anti-labour policies and its disinterest to end the strike,” CITU state president A Soundararajan said, adding that next round of talks would be held on Wednesday at 4 pm.

Soundararajan said that the employees were dismissed even as conciliatory talks were ongoing. He added that no workers should be sacked without the consent of the preceding officer under section 33 (1) (b) of the Industrial Dispute Act.

One of the dismissed employees said that they formed the trade union only after the management violated their rights. “Our cafeteria allowance was discontinued and 15 days paternity leave and 20 days half wage leave were scrapped. All these were done without holding talks with the workers,” he said, adding that their objective is to make the permanent workers quit on their own so that they can recruit contract workers.

Meanwhile, DMK president MK Stalin expressed displeasure over the management forcing employees to protest instead of resolving the issue. “I urge the management to amicably resolve the grievances of the workers without causing any trouble to the people,” he said.