NEW DELHI: Taking note of non-implementation of eight hours a day and 48 hours a week “working hours” rule for drivers of trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles as per the Motor Transport Workers (MTW) Act, the Supreme Court has directed road transport ministry to come up with an “effective method”, including the possibility of penal provision, to implement this norm.
“Unless there is a deterrent, this important provision regarding working hours of drivers cannot be implemented,” said the order passed by a bench comprising Justice Abhay S Oka and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan. The court has asked the ministry to convene a meeting of departments concerned of all states and UTs on this and also seek data regarding implementation of this provision.
All states and UTs will prepare comprehensive reports and submit them to the ministry by August, it said. The ministry is likely to convene a meeting on this in the next two weeks.
The apex court’s order gains significance considering that the practice of spending long hours behind wheels resulting in driver fatigue has been one of the key reasons for fatal crashes, particularly on highways. While filing FIRs, local police rarely record whether a driver involved in a crash was driving for more than the stipulated hours and hence this doesn’t get captured in govt data.
Sources said the road transport ministry is working on technology solutions to capture the details of how many hours commercial drivers spend behind wheels such as installation of an on board unit for swiping the Aadhaar Card or DL of the driver.
The Motor Vehicles Act mentions that the hours of work of any person engaged for operating a transport vehicle will be as per the provisions of the MTW Act. While this specifies the limited working hours, it provides for extended working hours beyond eight hours in any day and 48 hours in a week after obtaining requisite permission from authorities, but this can’t be more than 10 hours in a day and 55 hours in a week.
The provisions of MTW Act is enforced by the labour department of state govts. “This law applies to all entities having more than five motor transporter workers and these must be registered with the local labour departments. There is a need to increase this minimum threshold to 20 such workers. The enforcement of the law stands virtually suspended except in the case of PSUs and few corporations which have put a condition of due registration for bidding for any tender floated by them. Once all entities follow such a norm, players in the transport sector will start following the rule,” said S P Singh of IFTRT, a think tank on transport issues.