The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) employees and workers’ union have threatened a massive one-day protest at bus depots on March 2.
This development comes at a time when the city is all set to spring back to normalcy with COVID-19 restrictions being withdrawn.
Moreover, it has come to light that this will probably be the first time that the BEST unions are going to protest after the two years long COVID-19 lockdown.
The BEST workers’ union stated that this is over the issue of the bus depots of Pratiksha Nagar and Santacruz being utilised by wet-lease bus operators and that the total owned bus fleet is not catered to.
The BEST workers claimed that the administration is not bothered about their welfare. Meanwhile, the unions claim that private wet-lease bus operators are allegedly utilizing the land at Pratiksha Nagar bus depot. And that Santacruz depot is next in line. They have also pasted posters at different bus depots about the same. There is no place for our owned buses at these bus depots.
The fleet size of owned buses has come down to 1,900 buses or so despite the administration agreeing to maintain the fleet at 3,337 buses.
Additionally, they will also be protesting against the privatization of BEST owned land at bus depots for which we will gather at Wadala depot.
Besides, on February 28, the BEST Undertaking announced that one lakh ‘happy travellers’ are now using the BEST Chalo Card to pay for their bus travel in Mumbai. This is apart from the 5.50 lakh odd downloads of their Chalo App.
Share
Tweet
