The metro rail's operation and maintenance team has finally joined work as they withdrew strike on Tuesday, thus giving signs of resuming train movement on the Uttara-Motijheel route from Sunday.
"We have joined work as the prime demand for addressing pay disparity has been approved by the company's board on Monday," said one of the strikers.
Another demand for clearing arrears from the joining day was not met, but the board of the Dhaka Mass Transit Company Limited (DMTCL) formed a committee to this end, he told the FE.
The company sat in an emergency meeting on Monday soon after the board got a new chairman following the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government on August 05.
The DMTCL suspended the MRT-06 operation on July 19 after an incensed mob damaged the concourses of Mirpur 10 and Kazipara stations during the recent student-led quota-reform movement.
A day ago on July 18, aggrieved people also set fire to the footbridge below the viaduct of the Mirpur 10 station.
The metro company earlier set August 17 to resume the mass rapid transit (MRT) line 06 but failed due to work stoppage.
As posts of some board members lay vacant after Hasina had fled to India, the DMTCL could not accept the workers' main demand for removing pay discrimination without the board's approval.
DMTCL managing director MAN Siddique pinned high hopes on the resumption of the MRT, saying that it would be possible to restart operations on Sunday.
Sources, however, say everything depends on the outcome of a trial run of trains, which is necessary due to the suspension of the metro operation for over a month now.
There will be load test, track test, signal test, which are necessary before restarting the metro service. If anything wrong happens, new date will be fixed, according to one in the operation team.
The interim government in its first advisory committee meeting declared to resume the MRT operation on August 17, but the workforce under grades 10 to 20 continued their strike since August 06 to press for their six-point demand.
smunima@yahoo.com