PRTC drivers & conductors seek overtime, night allowances
Gagandeep Sharma
Tribune News Service
Bathinda, July 31
Drivers and conductors working with the PRTC on contract have not received their dues for the past eight months for performing overtime and night services.
They wrote to senior officials on many occasions but to no avail. PRTC officials say they don’t have sufficient funds to disburse the dues.
According to the information available, a driver on a contract basis gets 8,600 per month while a conductor gets Rs 7,875 per month. In the past, PRTC officials had announced extra dues for performing overtime and night duty. The announcement was made after seeing the long routes.
Sometimes, drivers and conductors have to spend the night out of station. The PRTC has started paying Rs 60 per hour extra for performing the night duty. After the announcement, they started plying buses on long routes.
As many as 491 drivers and conductors are employed with the Bathinda depot and many of them said they had not received their overtime and night allowances from December 2016.
They said, “PRTC employees working on a regular basis are getting Rs 40 to 50 thousand per month. The government is giving them salary every month. But our allowances are pending. Officials say they cannot do anything without funds.”
According to sources, an amount of Rs 2 crore is pending towards the PRTC.
Manjeet Singh Narang, Managing Director, PRTC, accepted that employees’ problem was genuine and they had released the amount of Rs 1 crore in the past.
He said the rest of the amount would be released at the earliest. He said there was no shortage of funds.
