The Chennai Metro Rail Ltd. has handed over operations of six metro stations to contract staff. The work at Annanagar Tower, Annanagar East, Shenoy Nagar, Pachaiyappa’s college, Kilpauk and Nehru Park stations has been handed over to contract staff. Prior to this, the work was being handled by CMRL’s permanent staff.
Around 250 employees of the said stations were instructed to hand over station controller, ticketing staff duties and other duties to contract employees along with the ticket money collected on Saturday.
However, the permanent staff are not too happy about this and claim that the safety of the passengers are at risk as none of the contract staff are trained.
Other stations in Chennai too have witnessed a similar shift in responsibility over the months with operations in the Nandanan, Teynampet, OTA and Saidapet stations being partly handled by the contract staff in the afternoon between 12-4 pm. Contract staff working for the metro were earlier handling secondary jobs such as track management. Permanent employees now raise the fear of increased incidents of glitches in the functioning of the metro.
Two companies that offer contract employees to CMRL are BVG India Ltd and KCIC.
Nearly 100 station controllers who were heading the said stations have now been asked to stay at the metro rail headquarters and visit the station to offer help to contract employees only if there is a problem.
Clarifying the decision, a senior CMRL staff spoke to TNIE stating that this was not an attempt to privatise metro operations. He also added that none of the CMRL’s permanent staff would lose their jobs and in fact, they have been instructed to help out the contract staff as and when needed.