BEST strike continues for 8th day

The BEST bus strike in Mumbai continued for the eighth day on Tuesday as the agitating workers and the management of the civic-run transport undertaking failed to reach an agreement.

Over 32,000 employees of the various workers' unions of the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) have been on strike since Tuesday last week and 3200-odd buses in its fleet are off the roads.

The Bombay High Court Tuesday directed the BEST workers' union to take a final decision on the withdrawal of its ongoing strike and inform the court on Wednesday.

However, the ongoing negotiations between the workers' unions and the BEST management as well as the intervention of the state government and political leaders failed to end the deadlock.

"The state government's high-powered committee has made up its mind to accept the union's major demand of merging the BEST budget with that of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and a decision to this effect is likely to soon," the officials said.

"A proposal of merger of both these budgets was passed last year in the BMC general body meeting...If all the demands of the BEST workers are met, then the civic body will have to bear the additional financial burden of around Rs 500 crore," he said.

Meanwhile, leaders of the workers' unions also demanded that the BEST head office should be shifted to the BMC headquarters.

"Both the budgets should be merged and new workers should get old grade pay benefits," said Ankush Karande, one of the representatives of the workers' union protesting at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in South Mumbai.

The BMC should run the BEST buses. The court should pass the order of the merger. The BMC should look after the BEST and its employees should get their salaries on the same day as other civic employees get, he said.

As commuters continue to face hardships due to the strike, the state transport body continue to ply its buses to ferry them.

"Since the last eight days at least 125 ST buses have been running on the city roads. On Monday, around 160 buses provided service, while on Tuesday 151 buses ferried passengers," he added.