Retd transport corpn employees to hold protest seeking DA hike

CHENNAI: The State Transport and Transport Corporations Retired Employees Welfare Association are all set to hold an attention-seeking protest on Monday in front of the eight transport corporation headquarters for the delay in complying with the Madras High Court order to pay enhanced dearness allowance to 86,000 retired employees of the corporation.

Despite the Madras High Court ordering the State Transport Undertakings to pay the enhanced dearness allowance to the retired employees in November and filing a status report on November 25, the corporation has failed to do so, said K Karsan, general secretary of the association.

Since November 2015, the retired transport corporation employees were not paid the enhanced dearness allowance. “Currently, the DA paid to the retired employees stands at 119%. In September this year, the government announced that the DA has increased to 203 %. Though the rate of DA paid to the retired government employees increases every six months, there has been no revision in the DA paid to us for the past 83 months,” he complained.

He added that the retired employees of the TNEB who were protesting against the non-hiking of the DA got the hike two days back. “Even after the Madras High Court passed the order in the contempt petition filed by us, there is no sign of hiking the DA for the retired transport employees. We are holding an attention-seeking protest on Monday. If the DA was not hiked even after November 25, we will hold massive protests across the state,” he said.