Strike by Metro staff ends on third day, 3 staff suspended for sabotage

“After the conciliation, the operation and maintenance staff who have been removed from service will give an appeal as per the procedure and all the remaining staff will report for duty on Thursday,” the spokesperson of CMRL said.

The decision to call off the strike came on the same day as CMRL suspended three employees, two traffic controllers and one depot controller, for sabotage of Metro train services on April 29.

In a statement, the CMRL said that it was found that three non-executive staff members — R Manokaran, K Prem Kumar, (both traffic controllers) and Cynthia Roshan Samson, depot controller — were controlling the entire train movement of both Corridor 1 and 2 on April 29.

They had deserted the workplace and halted the trains by giving a false critical command in the signalling system to disturb/hamper the Metro train services intentionally. The CMRL placed them under suspension for sabotage of the operational services. An inquiry will follow, the officials said.

Incidentally, Cynthia had received an award for performing duties under adverse condition during the jallikattu protest in January 2017.

After the second round of conciliation talks held in the presence of the assistant labour commissioner here on Wednesday, CITU state president A Soundararajan, who is also the president of CMRL Employees Union, said that they decided to call off the strike after the management agreed to positively consider the appeal of the dismissed workers and no vindictive actions would be initiated against the workers for joining the strike.

When asked about the suspension of three workers for sabotaging the operation of trains, he said that though it was a false charge, it would be dealt with separately.