Howrah ferry services were suspended at around 14 ghats on Wednesday after workers of the Hooghly River Water Transport Cooperative Society began an indefinite work stoppage over two months of unpaid salaries and pending Puja bonuses, disrupting a key water connection between Howrah and Kolkata during the festive season.
The stoppage began from Wednesday afternoon after workers protested outside the ferry terminal near Howrah railway station on Tuesday. The affected services connect Howrah with Golabari, Shobhabazar, Bagbazar, Chandpal Ghat, Armenian Ghat and Prinsep Ghat. Ferry operations also include the Howrah–Bauria and Howrah–Nurpur waterways.
The disruption has affected thousands of passengers using Howrah station to travel towards Kolkata. Ferry services normally see heavier demand during Durga Puja, when daily commuters are joined by large numbers of visitors travelling to pandals and other public destinations. For many passengers, the river routes provide an alternative to road-based travel between the two cities.
Workers said around 250 employees are associated with the cooperative and claimed that their salaries for the past two months and Puja bonuses remain unpaid. They said the delayed payments had created financial difficulties for their families ahead of the festival. The workers also claimed that ticket sales across the cooperative’s 14 ferry ghats generate several lakh rupees during the Puja period, and that the revenue could have been used to clear the outstanding payments.
The cooperative is currently being administered by the Assistant Registrar of Cooperative Societies in the Howrah district because it does not have an elected board of directors. An official holding additional responsibility for the cooperative’s elected board said on Tuesday that the Kolkata Port Trust, the state transport department and the district council receive substantial amounts from the society as rent. According to the official, those dues need to be cleared before employee salaries can be paid. The issue of the bonus, however, had not been resolved.
The official did not provide a timeline for clearing the workers’ salaries, while no response was available from the cooperative’s representatives after ferry services were suspended. The stoppage will continue indefinitely unless the workers’ demands are addressed, according to the report.
