CHENNAI: M Thirumalai (40), an MTC driver had to travel nearly 100 km each day between his home and the Tondiarpet depot where he worked. As there is a depot just 10 km from his house in a village in Arakonam, he decided to apply for a transfer.
All Thirumalai wanted was to be close to home but the demands for bribe and alleged harassment by MTC officials has forced him to even consider suicide.
When Thirumalai heard that an employee of the Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation wanted a transfer to MTC, he suggested that both of them could apply for a mutual transfer. “The TNSTC employee and I jointly applied for the transfer which was approved by both the MTC and the TNSTC in February,” Thirumalai told Express.
He then surrendered his documents to the MTC office on March 3 and was directed to collect his relieving order the next day from the MTC head office.
“I approached the deputy manager of the HR department but he told me that he won’t be able to grant me the transfer and said it wasn’t a ‘simple job’ to get done,” the driver said. The manager told Thirumalai that he would be given a relieving order only after the TNSTC employee began to work at MTC
On repeated questioning, the manager told Thirumalai that if he wanted it to be done he would have to pay. “They asked me for `70,000 and then made another person named Rajesh talk to me who asked for `27,000 and said that ‘he would take care of it’. I refused, and asked why I had to pay when I had the transfer order,” said Thirumalai.
Over the next four months, he went to the head office repeatedly and even after the TNSTC employee joined the MTC, Thirumalai was without a job. In May, the officials cited the elections for not process ing his relieving letter, even though he had applied for it in March.
He then approached the Triplicane police station to file a complaint, but the police refused to register his complaint. When he approached assistant commissioner’s office, he was turned away saying such cases were not dealt with there. The irate man has now filed a petition with the XIII Metropolitan Magistrate, Egmore to direct the police to file a complaint against four officials of the MTC head office.
When contacted by Express, MTC officials said rarely was a relieving order denied if the transfer order was granted, unless there were dues from the driver. “With regard to this case, it was probably delayed by elections,” an official from the personal department said.
News : The New Indian Express
