Contract roadways staff three-day stir begins, passengers hassled

The movement of state-run buses remained stalled in Jalandhar as the Punjab Roadways Punbus/PRTC Contractual Workers Union, Punjab, on Monday started their three-day strike.

Passengers remained harassed as they kept looking for private buses amid cold and foggy weather throughout the day. The worst-affected were the women who had to pay up for the ticket as they otherwise avail the free transport service in government-run buses.

There are 102 buses under the Jalandhar depot, of which only a few were on the run as the number of contractual employees with the Punjab Roadways, PRTC or Punbus are far more higher than regular employees. These buses plied on nearby routes towards Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Amritsar.

Even the passengers travelling to other states were harassed as the private buses do not run inter-state and they had to switch buses to complete their journey. Those heading to Jammu, Ambala, Shimla, Rajasthan, Haridwar and Delhi said their journey was unusually longer today. Some passengers also lamented, "The private bus operators are charging us more than the set rates", said a group of the youth heading to Sriganganagar for a training session.

President of the Jalandhar unit of the union Bikramjit Singh said members would gherao the residence of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann tomorrow as their demands of regularisation of their jobs was being overlooked by the government.