HYDERABAD: With three days to go for the state-wide bandh announced by the TSRTC’s striking employees, protests gathered steam across Hyderabad on Wednesday. The brewing anger among the RTC employees, after the government responded to their strike with non-payment of salaries and verbal dismissal, spilled onto the streets.
Hundreds of workers gathered outside the Musheerabad depot and shaved their heads to mourn the sorry state of affairs they had been pushed into.
Similar protests were held at the Osmania University where students from all parties came down and took out a funeral rally, Shava Yatra, as a form of protest. They carried and effigy of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on their shoulders while raising slogans and funeral cries. The effigy was eventually burnt in protest against the CM’s hardstand against the striking TSRTC employees.
“The CM has failed to fulfil the election promises he made to his supporters. We stand in solidarity with the RTC workers who fought for Telangana,” said a protesting student.
Meanwhile, protests took a violent turn in Dilsukhnagar after the protesting employees were rounded up by the police and detained for over an hour for their attempts to burn the CM’s effigy.
Similarly, in Kukatpally, Miyapur and HCU depots as well, employees flocked the depots and blocked the roads leading up to them.
“We are open to talks with the government. However they have not yet approached us, neither the corporation nor the government. The protests will continue and will aggravate from here until the bandh on October 19,” said Raji Reddy, co-convenor of TSRTC employees’ Joint Action Committee.