RTC strike may halt Telangana

Hyderabad: The Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (RTC) employees and workers unions on Thursday announced that they were going on strike as per schedule from the morning of October 5.

Mr Ashvatthama Reddy, convenor, RTC JAC, told media on Tues-day night, “we are going ahead with the strike to save the RTC. In erstwhile combined Andhra Pradesh  state also, we had given notices and the then governments tried to resolve our demands.”

“We have also fought for a separate Telangana. After achieving statehood, we were waiting for the past six years for the resolution of our demands. We requested Chief Minister K. Chan-drasekhar Rao several times to resolve our demands.”

He said, “We still have confidence on our Chief Minister, but because of an abnormal delay in response from the government’s side, around 50,000 employees are suffering and facing hardships.”

As the strike became imminent, the state government gave a stern warning to the employees’ unions, and threatened to invoke the Essen-tial Services Mainten-ance Act (ESMA) against the RTC staff, if they went ahead with the strike.

Earlier in the day, a three-man committee headed by Mr Somesh Kumar, special chief secretary, held discussions with RTC JAC leaders, which concluded unsuccessfully without a resolution.

Mr Ashvatthama Reddy told Deccan Chronicle, “We demanded the committee for a written commitment from the state government that RTC would be merged with the government. We also sought a written promise for resolving all the other demands of the employees. If either of the demands failed, we had already decided to go ahead with strike from October 5.”

Mr Ashvatthama Reddy, convenor, RTC JAC, said they had given a written commitment to the workers’ union, but it was not satisfactory. The committee sought six weeks time from the JAC to negotiate with the government to resolve all the demands of the staff.

According to the RTC JAC leaders, the committee warned them during the second day’s meeting that RTC workers and employees would be removed from service if they caused any disruption to alternate arrangements made by the government. According to them, as many as 50,000 employees and workers would participate in the strike.

In view of the strike call by RTC JAC leaders, committee head, Somesh Kumar, directed the transport department and RTC officials to make alternate arrangements for people to travel to their destinations during the Dasara holidays.

Meanwhile, the transport department and RTC officials are working to arrange for about 3,000 private drivers to run RTC buses till Dasara festival concludes.

The bus drivers working with private schools and those who have an experience of over 18 months would be hired to drive RTC buses. The department is offering `1,500 per day as wage for interested drivers and `1,000 for conductors. It is also preparing a list of retired employees to utilise their services in case of a strike.

According to RTA officials, the RTC has 12,000 buses across the state. They are prepared to deploy even school buses in case of a strike, besides engaging the services of interested students as conductors.

The department had instructed private travels to collect fares similar to those collected in RTC buses in case of a strike. During peak season, the RTC used to charge close to 50 per cent extra on actual fare from passengers.

The committee also sought legal opinion with regards to engaging private and school buses to make alternate transport arrangements during the strike period.