Unpaid monorail staff go on strike, services unaffected

Around 55 members of the monorail ticketing staff went on a strike on Sunday as they had not been paid their salaries for the past two months. However, monorail services remained unaffected.

“We have been demanding a fair reply from our company to pay the our salaries on time, but they tell us that they do not have enough funds to pay us as the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) do not release the money on time. The ticketing staff has not been receiving their salaries on time for the past one and a half years, but this time our salaries from March have not been paid,” said a ticketing staffer.

The MMRDA has outsourced the ticketing management to a third party named M--s. TnM under whom the 55 customer services assistants, also known as ticketing staffs, work. However, the ticketing staff members allege that because MMRDA is running incurring losses it is not releasing the ticketing staff’s salaries.

The MMRDA is currently facing losses to the tune of Rs 10 lakh per day though the commuter pattern has been increasing over time. The number of commuters using the services has increased approximately from 14,000 to 19,000 per day but that seems to not have helped the authority much.

It charges Rs 5 to Rs 11 between Wadala to Chembur depending on the distance to be travelled. To recover losses, the MMRDA had also increased the number of daily trips from 130 to around 160 by which services were made available at an interval of 12 minutes.

Meanwhile, in statement released on Sunday, the MMRDA claimed, “Appropriate action will be taken against the non-cooperating M--s. TnM and another vendor will be appointed soon. However, security of passengers and the system are not compromised as additional security force is available and the security officers of Scoomi Engineering are performing additional duties to avoid any inconvenience to the passengers.”