Protesting Transport Corporation workers arrested at Pallavan Salai

CHENNAI: Hundreds of transport corporation workers including CITU state president A Soundararajan were arrested by the police on Wednesday when they attempted to lay siege to the MTC depot on Pallavan Salai as part of the indefinite strike called by several trade unions including CITU and ATP.

Speaking to reporters, Soundararajan said that trade unions are ready to attend talks anytime if the government invites them.

“We have not received any official invitation for talks but the Transport Minister is telling the media that he is ready for talks. Minister is trying to create the wrong impression that the government is willing to negotiate but the unions are not coming forward. If we are officially invited for talks, we are ready to attend the meeting anytime anywhere,” he said.

He said that the protest to lay siege to the depot was announced as part of intensifying the indefinite strike with the management using unjustified ways to operate the buses.

Soundararajan said that the minister was giving out false information as if all the demands were fulfilled. “If our demand for the government compensating the gap between the revenue and the expenditure of the transport corporations was accepted in April 2022 itself, now all these issues would not have arisen. The retired employees would have gotten their pension, serving employees would have got their dearness allowance arrears and pensioners their DA hike. Minister thinks that he could hide the fact that retired employees' dearness allowance has not been hiked for the past eight years by not talking about it,” he said.

On the corporation issuing memos to the striking workers, he said that the workers participating in the strike are prepared to face all such threats.

Meanwhile, Transport Minister SS Sivasankar said that 98.36 per cent of the buses were operated across the state by all eight State Transport Undertakings.