Officials and employees of Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited (DMTCL) have announced a strike protesting the failure to formulate and publish permanent service rules even after 12 years.
According to their previously issued ultimatum, the staff declared that all passenger services under the DMTCL will be suspended from 7am on Friday, 12 December, as their demands remain unmet.
The strike threatens to bring Dhaka’s metro rail, one of the city’s key public transport systems, to a standstill.
In a press release on Wednesday, DMTCL employees announced that they will go for a full-scale work stoppage from Friday morning. Simultaneously, they also declared that they will hold a peaceful sit-in programme in front of the DMTCL head office.
They alleged that although DMTCL was established in 2013, in the past 12 years, no distinct service rules have been finalised for over 900 officers and employees. After the operation of the Metro Rail began on 28 December 2022, employees who joined through open recruitment have been providing services day and night. However, they are deprived of basic benefits such as leave, Contributory Provident Fund (CPF), gratuity, shift allowance, overtime, and group insurance, they said in the release.
According to them, without service rules, career, salary-benefits, and fair rights are not guaranteed. Therefore, no more assurances; no solution without published service rules, they said.
On 12 September, 2024, the advisory committee’s instruction was to formulate the Service Rules within 60 working days, which was not implemented. Later, when the workers began agitation on 13 February, 2025, the authorities assured to finalise the rules by 20 March. With nine months passing since that broken promise, intense resentment prevails among the employees. A final ultimatum was given to publish the rules by 9 December, which the authorities have failed to fulfill, they alleged.
