Haryana buses cut short long-route trips

Deepender Deswal

Tribune News Service

Hisar, November 20

Haryana Roadways buses are reportedly cutting short trips on long routes in an attempt to avoid payment of overtime to drivers and conductors, resulting in harassment to passengers.

Sharing his plight on Facebook, Hisar-based Salaudeen Kagdana wrote that when he boarded an early morning bus to Chandigarh, the conductor handed him a ticket for Kaithal, asking passengers to catch another bus from there. The conductor said they had to return from Kaithal as the department had decided to discontinue overtime payment.

The bus staff claimed they had been told to return midway en route to destinations to ensure their duty hours did not exceed eight hours a day. The roadways authorities at Hisar, however, denied any such directions, alleging that members of the employees’ union were indulging in such tactics to annoy them.

A driver on the Hisar-Panipat route said he got a call to return from Safidon in Jind district. Similarly, a conductor on a Hisar-Gurgaon bus claimed returning from Jhajjar, leaving the passengers at the bus stand there.

Dalbir Kiramara, a Roadways Talmel Committee member, said the officials at bus depots had cut short the long-route journeys to ensure the staff were on duty for only eight hours as “the orders from the Transport Department clearly state that the General Managers and Transport Managers would be responsible for overtime and the amount would be deducted from their salaries”. Arvind Sharma, Transport Manager, Hisar, denied any such directions. “They are doing so to annoy the authorities.

I will take disciplinary action against these drivers and conductors,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Director, Haryana Roadways, in a circular today mentioned that some GMs are cutting short the routes to bring down overtime of staff. The letter clarifies that the rotation of a bus should not be disturbed in the process.

Citing an example of the Delhi-Chandigarh trip, the letter mentioned that one trip counts for 12 hours; thus, the drivers and conductors are assigned this rotation four times — 48 hours — a week. The staff should not be given work for the remaining two days, while the seventh day is the weekly off.

Even some drivers on local routes rued that not only had their scheduled trips been disturbed, these had been cut to avoid overtime.