Denied overtime, 42 PRTC staffers move HC

CHANDIGARH: The Pepsu Road Transport Corporation (PRTC) is apparently reeling under acute penury and is unable to meet its financial commitments, be it payment of gratuity or overtime allowance. However, the standard alibi of "fund crunch" has not cut ice with annoyed employees who are coming to high court in droves, seeking a legal remedy to their woes. Given this backdrop, yet another petition was recently added to a burgeoning list with as many as 42 staffers, including conductors and drivers, knocking the doors of the high court over PRTC's strange ways. Petitioner Avtar Sharma, a driver, and 41 others, have been working under the jurisdiction of general manager, Pepsu Road Transport Corporation, Ludhiana depot. And, like a host of other employees, have failed to make head or tail of PRTC's twisting and turning of service law conditions. Seeking the court's intervention under Articles 226 and 227 of the Constitution, they have prayed for issuance of an order or a direction to the respondents, including chairman of PRTC, to pay overtime allowance due to be paid to them from February, 2005 onwards. They have also claimed 18% interest on the same. "The allowance is payable to us in terms of Regulations 35 and 36 of para IV of PEPSU Road Transport Corporation (Conditions of Appointment and Service Regulations, 1981)," they contended. The petitioners have also sought quashing of corporation's order, dated March 30, 2007, being contrary and illegal to the settled position of law in view of apex court judgments. The Supreme Court judgments hit at the very roots of the excuse of financial hardship so conveniently dangled out by the corporation even as it denies its employees their legitimate right to claim gratuity or overtime allowance. Given the nature of their job, the petitioners said, they plied buses on long routes and were being paid overtime allowance whenever they worked over and above their normal working hours. However, the corporation suddenly stopped paying the allowance, despite the fact that petitioners were being made to work overtime since March, 2005. Following the arguments, the division bench, comprising Justice Ashutosh Mohunta and Justice KS Ahluwalia, asked the respondents to file an affidavit by May 28 regarding payment of dues in view of the undertaking given by the corporation in a similar petition before the court. In the said petition, Gurmukh Singh and others Vs PRTC and others, the HC had observed that "Learned counsel for petitioners says that 33 months overtime has been due. Counsel for the respondent states that the payment will be in installments and every two months, arrears will be cleared along with current dues. Let an affidavit be filed to this effect."

7 May 2008, 0422 hrs IST , Vishal Sharma , TNN
THE TIMES OF INDIA