Rs 1,093 crore for terminal benefits of transport corpn staff

Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, who holds the finance portfolio, made this announcement in the first supplementary estimate presented in the Assembly onSaturday.

A senior Transport department official said that the allocation of Rs 1,093 crore would help the cash-starved transport corporations to pay the terminal benefits to all its retired employees which have remained unpaid for more than a year. “With the losses mounting, the transport corporations are in no position to pay the dues,” the official said.

Besides, Panneerselvam also announced a provision of Rs 508 crore towards the reimbursement of cost arising due to the concession in bus fares for students and also allocated a sum of Rs 302.06 crore as share capital assistance to state transport undertakings to procure 3,000 new buses for replacing the old buses.

P Balakrishnan, president of Government Transport Employees Union affiliated to CITU said that the fund allotted by the government would not be adequate to pay the dues of all the retired employees of all the transport corporations from April last year. “With the fund, the corporations will be able to settle the dues of those retired between April 2018 and March 2019. Even they will get only the terminal benefits like provident fund, gratuity, commutation and earned leave. But they may not get the wage agreement arrears and other pending dues,” he said, adding that there are about 650 retired personnel from the MTC alone.

Balakrishnan, who retired in June this year, said that he would have wait to get his terminal benefits until the government allocated more funds for the corporations. “If all the dues to the retired employees are to be settled, then the government should allocate Rs 2,700 crore, including the Rs 1,093 crore to the transport corporations,” he said.