SAD leader joins PRTC, Punbus employees’ protest; demands reinstatement

Former minister Bikram Singh Majithia on Sunday demanded that the AAP government immediately reinstate 302 Punjab Roadways Transport Corporation (PRTC) and Punbus employees who had been ‘arbitrarily thrown out of service and blacklisted’, over the course of the last few years.

On Friday, government buses went off roads following a two-hour strike called by the contract workers’ union of the Punjab Roadways and PEPSU Road Transport Corporation (PRTC), who were protesting against outsourcing 28 drivers and for regularising their employment.

Addressing a press conference before joining the dharna organised by the Punbus and PRTC Contract Workers Union, Majithia said transport minister Laljit Bhullar had even addressed a protest of the transport employees before the 2022 elections and assured that the AAP government would re-induct all employees whose services had been terminated arbitrarily besides regularising services of contractual employees. “Instead of doing this, the transport department is throwing out trained employees, who have put in 10 to 15 years of service and is hiring new untrained employees through a security agency. This smacks of corruption”, Majithia said.

Majithia said even though chief minister Bhagwant Mann had announced in the state assembly that all contractual employees would be regularised, his government was following an insidious agenda by terminating the services of contractual drivers and conductors receiving a salary of ₹17,000 to ₹18,000 per month and hiring fresh recruits at ₹9,000 per month. “This shows that the government does not have any agenda of regularising contractual employees but has made a plan to do away with their services altogether”.

The SAD leader also asserted that the AAP government was playing with the lives of passengers by hiring untrained recruits and doing away with the services of trained employees. He announced that the SAD would assist the contract workers union in not allowing new drivers and conductors to join their duties. “We will also confront (Laljit) Bhullar and ask him why he is destroying families of contractual employees and why he is not paying pending dues of employees”.