HYDERABAD: Just two more days to go for the ‘World Tourism Day’, and the employees of Tourism Development Corporation (TDC) of both the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh finally ended their five-day long protest for the rights over working space at the head office at Himayatnagar on Wednesday.
None of the employees from both states attended work for five days and literally stood on the road to protest. As the issue was going out of hand, the top brass of tourism department rushed to make truce between the employees.
After discussion on Wednesday evening, the principal secretary of Tourism and Culture, Telangana, BP Acharya directed the TSTDC employees to end their protest and allow their counterparts from APTDC inside the head office. ‘’Officials from both states made an agreement and the TDC functions as usual from Thursday,” said P Ramakrishna, president of Telangana Tourism Employees Union.
The disputes broke out between the staff of TSTDC and APTDC on September 19 when TS employees barred their AP counterparts from entering the head office and asked them to shift to the newly allocated Tank Bund office. It ended up as a five-day long protest by both the employee groups as AP staff refused to shift citing their rights given by the AP Reorganisation Act.
Though the issue was solved temporarily on Wednesday, there is a high possibilty that it may reoccur. An employee from TSTDC claimed that the agreement was made only for short period of time and soon APTDC office will have be move to the new office.
However, the APTDC employees dismissed the claims made by their counterparts from Telangana.
C Ramakrishna the assistant manager at APTDC said, “Both the TDCs made an unconditional agreement to share the work place like before. There was no mention about moving to Tank Bund office during the discussions.”