Disgruntled workers of a bus company staged a protest outside their now vacant premises as they claimed they have not received salaries for five months and neither has their company contributed the employers portion of their Employees Provident Fund payment since August 1997.

Placards in different languages - Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, and English - were hung on the buses, lamp posts, and inside Len Omnibus office in Selayang, Selangor during the protest yesterday.

The placards read, among others, Unscrupulous employer cheats us, We need the money to feed our children, Employer ignores workers safety, and Pay us our salary and pension money.

The 65-year-old bus company, one of the main providers of public bus services in Selangor, had employed some 400 workers at one time and was said to be collecting over RM1 million a month in revenue.

However, its public bus services have ceased since beginning of this month. Some 120 workers - bus drivers, conductors, ticket inspectors, mechanics, and administrative staff - then decided not to work in protest of the way things were being handled.

The management of Len Omnibus has since moved out of the office, without providing its aggrieved staff with any contact number or address.

Forking out own money

The workers have lodged several reports with the EPF, police, and the industrial relations department over the past five years. They have also sought the help of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) for help.

According to the workers, the problem of unpaid or delayed wages, non-remittance of EPF contributions remained unresolved over the years.

The workers action committee member Fakhruddin Yusop, 56, said complications arose after Len Omnibus was taken over by another company, whom he identified as the Naeila Group.

When the buses broke down, the company did not pay for the repair. They also did not want to renew the road-tax for many buses upon expiry, he told a crowd of some 80 workers at yesterdays protest.

In the end, bus drivers themselves had to fork out their own money to pay for fuel and maintenance during the months they were not paid any salaries, said Fakhruddin who was operations officer for the now-bust bus company.

Present at the protest were Keadilan secretary-general Sahri Bahari, supreme council member Dr Xavier Jayakumar, and PRM vice-president R Sivarasa.

No dividends

Bus driver M Subramaniam, 44, said their salaries were reduced from RM1,200 to RM750 a year after the change of management.

They also stopped our Socso (employees insurance). Apa-apa yang berlaku bila kita bawa bas, habislah (If anything were to happen to us during work, we are doomed), said the father of three.

He said during the last meeting with the Len Omnibus management on Jan 31, the workers were told that route permits held by the company had been leased to a third party and the workers should resign to join that company.

We do not want to resign ... they have not mentioned anything about paying us and there is no guarantee that we will get a job with the other company if we quit now, said Subramaniam.

Len Omnibus shareholder Yap Chung Mun, 48, who was also present, said the Naeila Group had not called for a shareholders annual general meeting since their takeover of Len Omnibus five years ago.

He said this was against the regulations of Registrar of Companies and he had filed a complaint with the relevant authority.

Nothing has been done. All we shareholders have not got any dividends for the past few years, said Yap who inherited a stake in Len Omnibus from his late father, an pioneer staff of the company.

Union acts

Speaking to the workers, PRMs Sivarasa, a human rights lawyer, advised them to consolidate their existing action committee and seeks meetings with concerned bodies including the human resources ministry.

Keadilans Jayakumar told reporters that TWU secretary-general Zainal Rampak Zainal, who is also the president of Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC), should have been of more help.

Being a member of the EPF board, he should have handled the non-payment of the EPF contributions more effectively. Instead, the workers have been sent on a wild goose chase and no one has taken any action on their behalf, said Jayakumar.

When contacted by malaysiakini , Zainal said compiling the complaints of the Len Omnibus workers was not an easy job and that certain quarters were taking advantage of the issue.

He revealed as a result of a continuous effort by TWU, the EPF had recently auctioned part of Len Omnibus assets to settle the unpaid employers contributions over the last five years.

He added the union had also last Saturday filed a case at the labour department seeking RM1.4 million from the company to pay the affected workers salaries and wages in lieu of notice.

Asked if wages in lieu of notice meant that a retrenchment exercise had already place, Zainal replied, This is considered a locked-out situation and therefore can be assumed to be retrenchment.

I have also told the authority that the Len Omnibus route permits should not be leased to another company but should be awarded to all eligible companies through an open tender, said Zainal.