The employees of KSRTC have launched a strike urging the government to declare them as government employees. Owing to this, movement of all KSRTC buses were halted across the district on Friday. The unaware passengers, who arrived at the bus stand, were left stranded.
Except for a handful of staff at the bus stand, most of the employees remained absent for duty. The passengers were seen waiting for hours hoping that the buses would start the service. But after they realised that the buses would not get on the roads, they took the private buses.
The passengers coming from far off places experienced inconvenience. The drivers got the buses to the bus stand early in the morning. A few buses started functioning as usual. But, as the strike was confirmed, drivers and conductors stayed away from duty. They staged a protest for sometime symbolically and went home. Thus, the movement of buses was completely halted.
The protesters said that they are in a difficult situation. They do not get facilities like government employees. They demanded that the government should consider them as government employees.
They said that they are getting 50% lesser salary than the government employees. They are facing difficulty in managing children's education, healthcare and family.
The government should look into all this and consider our just demand, they said.