RTC Staff Beset by Pay Dues, Unpaid Arrears, Increased Work and Inhumane Practices

Hyderabad: Having played a crucial role in the statehood movement, employees of the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) are resentful about the treatment meted out to them, with pay revisions remaining on and an increase in workload, among other issues.

Although the government decided to bring the TSRTC workers into the ambit of government employees, little has changed on the ground, they say.

Deccan Chronicle does a deep dive into the issues of TSRTC workers since the bifurcation of erstwhile undivided Andhra Pradesh. The names of workers have been changed to protect their safety.

Monetary benefits denied:

Post bifurcation, TSRTC workers aver they have been at the mercy of the state government. Apart from the 44 per cent hike that they got as part of the hikes given to employees post the formation of Telangana state, every other monetary benefit has been denied, they alleged.

The government gave bonds in lieu of half of the pending payments, owing to the revised pay scales of 2013 in 2015, but they remain unpaid. The validity of the five-year bonds ended in September 2020, with workers still awaiting payments, along with interest.

Further, the system of a new pay revision once every four years led to revisions in 2017 and 2021, but workers say only DA (dearness allowance) has been paid, with all arrears pending.

Increased workload:

Workers say that when the Telangana state was constituted, 56,740 employees used to cover 31 to 33 lakh kilometres per day, which has increased to 35 lakh kilometres at present, given the number of employees has fallen to 43,777.

While the TSRTC ran buses in 3,593 routes in March 2022, the number fell to 3,328 routes with a withdrawal of 265 routes by March 2023.  

RTC employees state that conductors are being replaced by TIMs (ticket issuing machines) and driver changeovers were done away with by citing better roads and increased speed limits, but they were only leading to accidents.

While the number of contract staff directly employed by the RTC is pegged at around 50, over 5,000 workers are being employed through third-party agencies.

Workers say that as per norms, each bus should have six personnel, including mechanics, drivers, conductors and clerical staff, but the strength at present was below five on average.

B. Arun, a conductor, said: “Post the failure of the strike by the workers in 2019, we are at the mercy of the government as the recognised union has now been replaced by a welfare committee, which has two representatives from every depot. Taken on the basis of seniority for namesake, they toe the line of the government.”

C. Prasad, who works at an RTC depot, said that the failure of the strike has curtailed the voice of workers.

Employees also complain that the money saved by them by foregoing seven per cent of their salary towards their cooperative society, amounting to Rs.1,400 crore, has been used up by the management. They point out they are not getting loans they used to for their urgent needs.

“Despite court orders, the money is not being given on time and employees are giving up society membership. From a high of 57,000, it has fallen to fewer than 20,000 employees. The money deposited by those who withdraw from the society is also not being given back on time,” said A. Yadagiri, a bus conductor.

Asked if there was a visible benefit after the merger announcement by the government, V. Bhanu Prakash, a depot worker, said: “As of now, we don’t know how we will benefit. The two pay scales which are pending have not been cleared. What percentage of it we will get is also not clear. “

“We used to get some advance payment for Dasara, but even that has been given to a goby. The government seems to have decided not to count on students and workers,” said C. Sravan, another depot worker.

“The government is replacing conductors with TIMs. The government, which barred bus drivers from using their mobile phones during duty hours recently, expects us to use TIM machine. How is using it different from a mobile phone in terms of they being a distraction? Those who book tickets online call us to know the location of the bus. We enquire if the customer would reach us on time or not. In the absence of a mobile phone, we might lose customers if we don’t do this and we leave without ferrying them,” said B. Suresh, a bus driver.

Unfair, inhumane practices:

Workers said that even avail of casual leaves (CLs) for necessities was turning out troublesome, sharing a slew of rejected requests on their phones.

A conductor said that he was asked to post a photo with the body of his relative, who had died, while another said he was denied leave to attend the last rites for his father-in-law.

“Will our relatives die based on my leaves and final rites happen based on them?” said K. Sharath, a bus driver.

Another worker said: “We are working without any self-respect.”

Historically, the employees say, state governments have used RTC as a milch cow and benefitted more by way of taxes on diesel and GST on the spare parts they purchase. They further use them to gain political mileage by running buses on non-profitable routes, providing free passes to students, MLAs and MLCs, among others, and subsidising travel for employees without reimbursing the amount on time.

Questioning what he called the use of discriminative terminology to discredit the public-owned TSRTC, V.S. Rao, general secretary of the SWF (CITU) said, “The RTC pays 24 per cent of its income in taxes, even as corporate tax was reduced from 30 per cent to 18 per cent recently by the Modi government. We also pay the nala tax on our land parcel of 1,400 acres, which no other company does. RTC has a social responsibility to serve by ferrying services to the nook and corner of the state. It carries nearly 35 lakh passengers per day throughout the state while the Hyderabad Metro serves a few kilometres for a maximum of five lakh travellers per day. But while Metro is given what is called viability gap funding to recoup losses, the RTC is castigated as a loss-making entity.”

“To begin with, the government invested Rs.280 crore in the RTC for united AP in the ratio of 67: 33 (Centre:state) in 1958, following which there was no further investment. Post that, not a penny was given from the state or Central coffers until now,” he said, adding the promised Rs.1,000 crore by Chief Minister Chandrashekar Rao after the 2019 strike a mere empty rhetoric.

“The discrimination against the RTC is institutionalised in various forms. The RTC bought 657 buses in the last five years. While the RTC is not buying new electric buses, schemes like Fame (Faster Adoption of Mobility of Electric and Hybrid vehicles) 1 and Fame 2 designed by the Centre to give impetus to use of electric buses, provides a subsidy of '1 crore and '50 lakh under the respective schemes for private consortiums, excluding state-run RTCs from it. The buses will thus go to only private companies,” V.S. Rao said.

Rao said that the Centre is coming up with a NEBP (National Electrical Bus Policy) to run electric buses in rural areas on the GCC (Gross Cost Contract) model, where the RTC pays the bid amount to the private operator for running services.

“The operator is assured of their payment, but this arrangement assures no income guarantee to the RTC. The buses being run on the airport route without a conductor are based on this model,” he said, adding they are going to introduce nearly 3,000 buses on this model.

Workers further cited ‘illegally run’ cab aggregator services that ran without paying any tax for denting the RTC’s income. They said the services were legalised by the Motor Vehicles Act, 2019.

Status of merger with government

The state government, following its announcement on the merger of RTC with the government, did not take any step to legalise it, workers say.

“The government, in reality, plans to take only the corporation employees under its muster rolls and not contract employees and the corporation, as such. Post the announcement, the government did not bother to formulate guidelines although it had two months to do so before the election code kicked in,” said K. Raji Reddy, general secretary, TSRTC Employees Union.

“Right now, we are still RTC employees, not of the government. The arrangement is that the government would guarantee our salaries for two years from the state exchequer and in the meantime, the corporation has to improve its financial condition. It has to pay off its debts within two years. The RTC owes Rs.4,000 crore just to its workers,” he said.

The number of buses running in the state fell from 10,478 in 2014 to 9,233 buses, with 850 services reduced in Hyderabad alone, despite the need for increased public transport to curb pollution and ease traffic congestion.

“Hiring a bus while being profitable for the corporation is an instrument to exploit the worker. A permanent employee is paid Rs.40,000, while a person on contract is paid Rs.12,000. The RTC claims this is beneficial to the corporation. We are yet to get 50 per cent of our dues given as bonds in 2013 and the PRCs from 2017 and 2021 are yet to come. Salaries of RTC employees in Telangana are less than half at the entry level in the Andhra Pradesh RTC, as employees had a wage rise in 2017 and after merger with the government in 2020, they got another PRC along with government employees,” a union leader said.

Nature of work	Andhra Pradesh (basic pay at the time of joining)	Telangana (basic pay at the time of joining)
Conductor	Rs.24,280	Rs.12,610
Driver	Rs.28,630	Rs.13,780
Mechanic	Rs.24,280	Rs.13,070
Junior assistant	Rs.24,220	Rs.13,950
Senior assistant	Rs.35,720	Rs.15,580

Employees further alleged that the entitlements of those who retire are not being settled in time. The breadwinner scheme, which provided for employing qualified members of the workers’ family in case of death or becoming medically unfit as permanent employees, has currently been watered down to contract jobs for an initial period of three years. The job is confirmed based on extraneous factors like being pliable at the whims and fancies of the higher-ups, workers said.