MTC floats tender to engage contract drivers, conductors to operate its regular bus services

CHENNAI: MTC has floated a tender to engage 234 drivers and conductors to operate regular bus services in the city as it could not operate 500 scheduled services on a daily basis owing to driver shortage.

According to the tender document, the MTC has invited bids from manpower agencies to supply 117 drivers and 117 conductors with valid driving licences for driving heavy transport vehicles and conductor licences.

MTC sources said that the move to engage drivers and conductors through the manpower agencies was taken to overcome the crew shortages which is affecting the bus services.

"To operate its daily scheduled services of 3,233 buses, MTC requires 8,487 drivers to operate all the services but it has only 7,885 drivers and a shortage of 602 drivers. Due to driver shortage, they were not able to operate full scheduled services and an average of 500 services were not run daily, " the sources added.

Due to the want of crew, MTC has suffered a 29.70 lakh trip loss in 2022-23 which is 115 per cent more than the trip loss of 13.80 lakh in 2019-220.

CITU-affiliated Tamil Nadu State Transport Employees Federation general secretary K Arumuga Nainar said that his union strongly opposes the move to invite tender to engage drivers and conductors through manpower agencies on a contract basis.

"In April, we gave a strike notice against the move to engage contract drivers. The conciliatory talks are going on between the union and the MTC in the presence of the labour commissioner. The labour commissioner has asked the MTC to maintain the status quo on the issue. How can they invite tender in violation of the status quo?" he said, adding that the CITU union would meet on October 3 to decide on the next course of action.

It may be noted that the move by the MTC to engage the contract drivers in its depot led to a flash strike on May 30 by the ruling DMK-affiliated LPF union, CITU and others.