24-hour strike by Railways from tonight: SLSMU

The Sri Lanka Station Masters’ Union (SLSMU) has decided to begin a 24-hour strike from midnight today.

SLSMU President Sumedha Somaratne told the Daily Mirror that decision was taken for not taking actions to fill the vacancies that exist in the department.

"There is a scarcity of signal operators and the retirees assigned to the service were not paid during the past six months and they had stayed away from work since Monday. Therefore, the trains need to be operated without signals and it will be extremely dangerous," he said.

There will be issues while operating train services and several trains might get cancelled tomorrow, Mr. Somaratne said.

The inconvenience caused the commuters due to the disruption of train services should be borne by the Government and the Railway Department, he added. (Chaturanga Samarawickrama)