Hyderabad: Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (RTC) employees are being made to work for twice their regular working hours due to the shortage of staff, without paying wages in accordance with labour laws.
Workers’ unions are against this extra work and a Right to Information (RTI) query has been filled by union president N. Krishna of the Hakimpet depot, enquiring about the number of night duties that drivers and conductors were made to do and the amount they were paid in the last three months.
Currently, drivers are being paid Rs 530 and conductors Rs 500 for a double shift. This amount can be cut if the number of kilometres that they are supposed to log falls short of the target for whatever reason. Sometimes the drivers are asked to work on their weekly off with no increase in the amount of Rs 500 instead of full wage.
“We don’t know on what basis the management is paying us this amount. Doing a double shift soon after your duty is a tiresome task. This is the reason why the workers should be paid double, according to the laws. However, we are being paid less,” Mr Krishna said.
According to the Code of Wages, 2017, an employee must be paid double the normal rate for over time.
The Code states: “Where an employee whose minimum rate of wages has been fixed under this Code by the hour, by the day or by such a longer wage period as may be prescribed, works on any day in excess of the number of hours constituting a normal working day, the employer shall pay him for every hour or for part of an hour so worked in excess, at the overtime rate which shall not be less than twice the normal rate of wages.”
K. Hanumantha Mudiraj, the general secretary of the Telangana Jatiya Mazdoor Union, said the workers must be paid on the basis of their basic salary, “But the management pays only a fixed amount that too with all the cuttings. There have been many discrepancies in terms of wages for the overtime work, which is not even known to the workers.”
A driver from one of the depots in the Old City said that “there would be unsaid obligations from our depot heads on us to do the double shift if there is a requirement. There won’t be much scope for us to reject the duty if allotted. Drivers are under a tacit obligation to their depot heads to do the double shift if it is required and they would not be able to refuse.”
“Doing an eight-hour shift in the city is difficult considering the traffic and the crowd of passengers. Extending that would be dangerous as the driver won't have much rest,” the driver said.
Road transport expert K. Vinod Kanumala, the chairman of the Indian Federation of Road Safety, agrees that the stressed drivers on double shifts could increase the chances of accidents.
“Drivers’ physical and mental condition should also be taken into consideration before asking them to do double duty. They should not be forced to do the extra shift if they are not willing to do so,” he said. Asked to comment on this issue, an RTC official admitted that drivers are paid the same amount — '500 — even if they did overtime.
But the official said that in the double shift generally “they won’t be working for all the eight hours; it would be on an average 6.5 hours.”
