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A new crisis in the transport sector is looming as employees in the private bus transport sector have threatened to go on strike for their rights after 27 years from the beginning of the service. All conductors and drivers in the sector will be on strike on March 28 demanding job security and social benefits, EPF and ETF rights.

However, the almost totally unorganised and unincorporated small scale or single owner service business has been shaken by the new threat of the employees. There is no formal working procedures in the sector and owners are operating their business to maximise the daily collection.

Most of these employees are hiring buses on a daily payment basis from the bus owner and therefore in a sense they are not employees and they do their own business, bus owners said. Bus owners who pay daily wages for the employees are also not employing the same people over a long period of time.

Bus owners do not receive the total daily income earned by their buses because most of the employees are stealing money and as a result they have to change employees often. The President of the Private Bus Owners Association Gamunu Wijeratne said that giving into employees demands has become a problem due to these complexities in the sector.

Since the government decided to make the EPF and ETF payment compulsory for the private bus transport sector, employees in the sector have organised themselves to win their rights, Wijeratne said.

He said that the sector is totally unorganised and the government had ignored a cabinet proposal introduced a few years ago based on proposals presented by the bus owners to organise the sector. It has proposed to establish bus companies for each route to overcome all issues prevailing in the sector including issues of the workers.

The other reason bus owners are reluctant to pay social security benefits to the employees is the fear of being of caught in the tax net. Wijeratne said that they have to register the business to pay EPF and ETF and declare their income. He said that majority of the bus owners are not in a position to pay taxes.

However, sources said that the service business is highly profitable and entrepreneurs who started business with one old bus have expanded their business within a short period of time to own several new buses. Today the price of a new 42-seater bus is around Rs.2,863,000 and owners pay Rs.50,000-70,000 leasing charges per month.

This poorly regulated essential service sector severely affects the productivity of the economy. They are controlling the passenger transportation in the country and in passenger Km terms the private sector controls nearly 80% of the bus transport in the country and there are around 20,000 buses. The Ceylon Transport Board (CTB) operates only 3,500 buses. GW

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