Strike against fuel prices affects thousands in Chennai – Times of India

CHENNAI: The strike against fuel prices affected millions of people, mainly students and office-goers, in the state on Monday and trade unions have decided to operate 60% of government buses on Tuesday – day two.
K Natarajan of the DMK-affiliated Labour Progressive Federation said it was decided to change the form of protest. “Only senior leaders will participate in the protests and will abstain from work. Others will return to offices so that essential services don’t get affected,” he said.
In Chennai, more than 90% (3,000) of MTC buses remained off road, while across Tamil Nadu, only one-third of buses could be operated as transport department employees abstained from work despite threats from the government to cut their salaries.
As a result, students and office-goers had to wait for more than one hour at bus stands. Krishnaveni, a Class XII student who was waiting at Velachery bus stand in Chennai, said, “Since I had my exams (second revision) today, I could not take leave. While boys managed to travel on footboard on the few buses that were available, we were left stranded.”
The situation was no different in the evening. Many parents picked up their children on bikes or cars. Others had to take suburban trains as they found metro train tickets expensive.
More than 700 suburban trains were operated through Arakkonam, Gummidipoondi, Velachery and Chengalpet routes. Though they were packed through the day, additional services were not operated. As of 9pm, 1,61,861 people had travelled in the metro rail.
Besides students and office goers, people who arrived from other districts of Tamil Nadu and from other states were stranded at Koyambedu, both at the terminals for government and private buses.
So, private vans arrived at Koyambedu and other transit hubs like Central and Egmore railway stations to transport these passengers.
Government employees belonging to CITU, AITUC, LPF and other central trade unions protested at 11 locations including Anna Salai, Chepauk, Guindy and Pallavan Illam. This affected traffic for a very short span. But arterial roads largely remained uncongested. Police detained around 600 protesters and released them later in the evening.