TSRTC employees call off 52-day-old strike

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, November 25

Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) employees’ Joint Action Committee (JAC) today called off the 52-day-old strike, even as state Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) remained adamant and refused to enter into any negotiation with the 48,000 employees. The TSRTC employees were demanding merger of the corporation with the government.

The matter could not be resolved even in the Telangana High Court as the court refused to declare the strike illegal and asked the matter to be taken before the Labour Court. Joint Action Committee (JAC) convener Ashwathama Reddy has asked the striking employees to withdraw from the protest and to turn up for duty from Tuesday.

During the 52-day strike, two employees committed suicide, while another four died from heart attacks and other health issues that were directly blamed on stress relating to the loss of work.

The JAC has announced that all TSRTC employees should go to depots for resuming their duty. Chief Minister Rao had announced that services of all employees who failed to resume duty during the two deadlines would automatically stand terminated.

Currently, TSRTC services have been badly affected and the state government had pressed temporary private drivers and conductor to run the bus services. However, the JAC has requested the temporary staff to stop running the buses from tomorrow. But so far there has been no word from the government on whether it would allow the TSRTC staff to resume work.

Meanwhile, sources in the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) said Rao was likely to call for a Cabinet meeting sometime next week to discuss the issue of privatising 5,100 TSRTC routes. The High Court has already stated that the government was free to run private buses on any routes it so desired. However, it ruled that as per the Motor Vehicles Act, the state was obligated not to privatise more than 50 per cent of TSRTC routes.

After the TSRTC workers went on strike on October 5, the government invited applications to hire 2,248 private buses for the corporation and it had received around 22,332 applications in response. The issue of finalising these permits is expected to be completed during the current year, TRS sources said.

Box: To start work from today

Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao remained adamant and refused to enter into any negotiation with the 48,000 employees

The matter could not be resolved even in the Telangana High Court as the court refused to declare the strike illegal and asked the matter to be taken before the Labour Court

The JAC has announced that all TSRTC employees should go to depots for resuming their duty from Tuesday