A section of drivers of wet lease buses was holding out, demanding “a written assurance” from the government, and was still in protest mode outside bus depots.
Whether BEST services will normalise will be known on Wednesday morning when the drivers resume their duties, said sources. On Tuesday, BEST said 90% of the fleet operated with help from MSRTC.
“We are trying to get a written statement from the government it will look into our demands and this will be given to those still protesting. We hope to get all drivers back on duty,” said Vikas Kharmale, who represented drivers from several depots and was part of the delegation that met Shinde.
“The CM promised us he will hold a meeting with wet lease contractors and government officials and resolve all our issues. With this assurance that we will get a salary hike, bonus, leaves, free bus pass etc, we collectively decided to call off the strike,” he said.
But Sangharsh Kamgar Karmachari union secretary J M Kahar, representing a section of wet lease workers, told TOI: “Many drivers are not happy with a small delegation of protesters meeting the CM and getting verbal assurance. Unless they get anything in writing, they will continue the protest outside bus depots.”
Kharmale’s group released a statement after the 1.30pm meeting in Thane. “The CM was sympathetic towards our demands and also met BEST driver Raghunath Khajurkar’s wife Pradnya, who was on hunger protest at Azad Maidan,” said Kharmale. This was the trigger for the larger strike from August 2.
On their primary demand that “contractual drivers should be absorbed in BEST”, Shinde told the team there will be talks and the demand cannot be fulfilled immediately.
“It is a process which involves calling for meetings with the BMC chief, BEST general manager and wet lease contractors and will take time. The CM will come up with the best solution for drivers,” said a leader of Rashtriya Karmachari Sena, the Shiv Sena union.
BEST spokesperson Sunil Vaidya said the undertaking had incurred huge losses, both in terms of ridership and revenue, during the week-long strike (see box). The penalties imposed on contractors for not running buses during the strike crossed Rs 2.8 crore.
On Tuesday, 90% of the BEST fleet was on road, and 305 buses were lying idle at the depots. It got assistance from 210 MSRTC buses, 100 school buses, and nearly 700 full-time BEST drivers operated wet lease buses throughout the day.
