With the heated ongoing TSRTC strike of employees for nearly one month, Telangana chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao came up with a new announcement that the government has decided to privatise 50% of the state’s bus services. This may hugely affect employees in term of pay cuts and livelihood.
KCR also asked all the employees who are on strike to return to work by midnight of November 5. It is known that nearly 48k TSRTC employees commenced an indefinite strike from October 5 across Telangana state, demanding RTC’s merger with the government. A few other demands were also raised like the revision of their salaries pending since April 2017 and fresh recruitment in the corporation to reduce the workload on the employees.
After a month, KCR has decided to give a final opportunity to the frustrated/upset employees during his five-hour long meeting of the state cabinet at Pragati Bhavan. He said that the employees are given only three days time and they have to return to their duties unconditionally by midnight of November 5. If they are not shown up, he added that it would lead to losing their jobs and he won’t be responsible for that. KCR appealed to all the employees to stop destroying their lives and return to work. Also, the state government would give permits to the private operators to operate the remaining 5300 buses as well.
Currently, RTC is not a healthy position to purchase new buses as a substitute for 3000 buses which are unfit. Therefore, the cabinet has decided to privatise the 3000 buses apart from 2100 hired services. KCR said ‘The government will be given permits to private bus operators to run 5100 buses. The remaining 5300 buses would be under the control of the RTC’.
Shockingly, the decision would in turn make Telangana state with no public transport. Though KCR said that this wouldn’t affect the public as they only want transport facility, in reality, the rural areas which are non-profitable will be in stake and even school passes may be considered invalid. Public transport is indeed essential for travelling on peak hours and in non-profitable routes.