Hyderabad: The government has failed to revise the pay scale of employees of the 80-year-old Road Transport Corporation since the formation of Telangana state. RTC employees stated that Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had stated in the Assembly in 2021 that the pay scale of employees would be revised. In May 2023, the Chief Minister claimed that wages would be increased shortly and also announced a committee in this regard.
Now that the Model Code of Conduct is in place for the upcoming Assembly elections in the state, the issue is again on the back burner until the next government is formed.
Although employees of the TSRTC were absorbed by the government a few months ago, the employees are staring at a collective loss, amounting to nearly Rs5,000 crore.
Nearly 55,000 employees are eligible to get the revised wages between April 1, 2017 and April 1, 2021. If implemented, the pay revision would ensure each employee gets between Rs4 lakh and Rs10 lakh on average.
However, nearly 11,000 employees retired between April 2017 and September 2023, subjecting them to huge losses.
The pay revision, which happens once every four years, has been pending since 2017.
Currently, the RTC has a strength of 43,330 employees. If the government revises the pay scale, it would not just benefit these employees, but also those who have retired from service.
Current and retired employees are urging the government to revise the pay scale.
“The attitude of the government as well the management towards its employees has always been step-motherly. When other corporations, similar to the RTC, are getting revised pay on higher levels, why RTC employees are neglected and denied their dues,” asked former RTC director M. Nageswara Rao.
“In the history of the RTC, such neglect has become commonplace only after the new state was formed,” he added. “Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao stated in the Assembly, in 2021, that the pay scale of TSRTC employees would be revised and the additional burden would be borne by the state government. The Chief Minister made a similar statement during the May Day celebrations in 2023. The workers kept waiting, but nothing fruitful happened,” Nageswara Rao said.
