Following the breakdown of talks with the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited, employees of Namma Metro have decided to go on strike from March 22.
On Wednesday, BMRCL executive director had called for a meeting with members of the employees' union to hear their grievances.
Vice-president of the union Suryanarayana Murthy said BMRCL officials held an informal meeting, where they said their grievances will be addressed in three months.
But the union members disagreed with the timeframe. "There's no positive outcome from the meeting. We have an official meeting at the Chief Labour Commission's office on March 16. If the talks fail, we'll definitely go on strike," Murthy added.
Another source from the union said BMRCL is deploying people on contract basis to handle the Operation Control Centre without prior training.
The control centre is regarded as the nerve centre of the BMRCL's train operations and requires at least two months of continuous exposure for individuals to handle the operations. "They're asking us to report at the control centre without any training since only contract employees, that too former servicemen, are deployed there," said a union member.
The BMRCL had earlier threatened to invoke Essential Services Management Act (ESMA) to thwart the strike proposed by the employees, but it later decided against the move.
On late Wednesday afternoon, a forged ESMA notification was circulated among the Namma Metro employees. The fake document had the signature of the deputy secretary, urban development department.
A source from the employee union confirmed that it was a fake document. They suspect someone in the management had circulated it.
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