When road monsters flex their muscles

TRANSPORT: For many years it was the monster employers, in the form of private bus owners, who threatened strikes, carried them out and more often than not had their way with successive governments.

Anything from an increase in the price of diesel, alleged police harassment of their crews, an increase in the customs duty on spares for buses, and the pure and simple greed to fleece the travelling public were enough causes to take their buses off the streets.

This time it's a different stroke. It not the monster employers but the even more monstrous employees of those employers who threaten strike action.

It's a good ploy for the private bus owners association, with its all too public links with the UNP, to seek the disruption of public life, through a strike by their employees.

The demands are not much different that of their employers. The first is to get the police off their backs. Give them freedom to rule the roads in the monstrous way only they know how to, while the police remain observers of the situation.

Just to give the impression that their intended strike is not against the travelling public, they have added an interesting demand that private bus crews be given permanency of service.

It is an interesting ploy because the employers who rake in the profits, after the rip offs of the public by their crews, can claim they are helpless in the matter, because if government does not order permanency to their employees.

It is bad enough having a non-permanent of casual employee, often not licensed to drive a bus, or one with a fraudulent licence, or else holds a licence but has no experience in driving a bus on the road. It defies all sense of horror to give them permanency in the right to kill and maim on the road.

A crooked nexus

It needs much wild imagination to believe there is no connection or understanding between the private bus crews threatening to strike against their employers, and the employers themselves.

It is a crooked nexus between employers and employees to whom the interests of the travelling public is of the least concern, giving a new dimension to the power of private bus operators in this country.

The President of the Private Bus Owners' Association, Gemunu Wijeratne, a UNP candidate at the last General Election, has often stated on TV and to the Press that a large number of bus drivers and conductors are drug addicts; that many drivers did not have proper licences to drive heavy vehicles carrying passengers.

He could never explain why such people were employed, knowing very well that they were unsuited for the work they were entrusted with. It is obvious the bus owners association cannot or will not give in to the fake demand by their crews about permanency of employment.

The bigger issue is the common demand of bus owners and their crews of the police allegedly harassing them by imposing fines for the slightest violation of traffic laws. This is indeed a fallacy.

The police department is yet to be rid of some higher ranks who are themselves private bus operators, not directly but by proxy through their spouses or close kith and kin.

Whatever the private bus owners and their crews may say, there are many private bus owners whose crews are never fined by the police, or if charged provide them an easy escape.

The IGP may say it is only a small number of bad eggs in the police who are in the private bus racket. But, there is never any quantifying what this small number is, in a service employing over 100,000.

Corrupt policemen, who turn a blind eye to the violations of traffic rules by some, are as bad or even worse than those bus crews that violate the highway code, and those who continue to employ them, even as casual workers.

Take on these monsters

The government should not give in to these monsters whether private bus owners or their crews. While the bus crews, echoing their masters, allege the police are far too often on their backs, the fact is that the police do not charge them often enough; and that too for really serious offences.

Despite frequent announcements by the police about crackdowns on traffic offenders, some bus crews often go scot-free with a whole range of violations of traffic rules.

Private bus owners holding the travelling public to ransom, either by themselves, or as it now appears by proxy through their crews cannot be tolerated any longer.

Far too many have died on the roads, and too many people maimed for life because of these bus crews, and the employers who brazenly obtain their services, and do nothing about how they treat passengers.

We will need a special flying squad to catch the conductors who do not give the full or some of the balance in change when a passenger buys a ticket in private buses.

The collection from this non-formal extortion is at times be higher than their daily wage from the employer, who knows all about it, but doesn't care a damn, as long as he gets his targeted earnings for the day.

Private bus owners and their crews deserve no sympathy whatever in their efforts to enrich themselves.

What these bus crews seek by way of permanency is to give EPF and ETF, gratuity and all other benefits of permanent employees to criminals plying vehicles on the road and not to genuine employees, skilled in their work, and follow the courtesies demanded of their job.

It is known that bus owners have already filed their claim for increase in bus fares, which are due to be revised in July each year, based on the justification for an increase.

What they are now attempting through their casual or convenient crews of road terror is to give the public and government a foretaste of what they are in for if the new fare hike they seek is not given.

The bus owners, who shed copious tears in public about difficulties in carrying on their business, are always purchasing new vehicles to keep their fleets on the streets to rake in the profits.

What is always hidden is that the fare hikes demanded are in fact to keep paying the leasing instalments on their vehicles.

Whatever muscle the private bus owners or their crews may flex, the fact is that they cannot be off the roads for more than three days, without defaulting on their lease instalments. That's why they've never had a bus strike for more than three days.

Let them flex their muscles with all the monstrous threats about the adverse impact on passenger transport.

The government can be sure that the people will certainly put up with any hardship, even for a week, if standing firm brings these marauders of the road to their feet.

It is time their bluff was called, and the police became more vigilant about bus crews that flout traffic rules, whoever may own their buses.