HYDERABAD: Chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao said the burden of subsidies given in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) jurisdiction would have to be borne by the GHMC. The subsidy burden is of the order of Rs200 crore. After the talks with striking employees, the chief minister took several decisions on Wednesday to bail out the loss-making TSRTC. One among such measures was to ask GHMC to bear Rs200 crore every year for TSRTC. “We have decided to amend the GHMC Act for this,” the chief minister told reporters later. Besides, the state government would provide ‘special grant’ in the state budget for RTC to support the loss-making fleet financially. “There will be Rs800 crore additional burden on the TSRTC due to revised salaries. Of which Rs200 crore would be borne by the GHMC. RTC would save around Rs400 crore by internal efficiency. I will conduct a detailed review meeting on the RTC by the end of this month, once the APSRTC is bifurcated. I will make RTC a profitable organisation within three years,” Rao said.
He said that the state would not give any exemption to TSRTC on paying MV Tax or paying VAT on diesel sales. “We will provide special grant in the budget to support the RTC,” the chief minister said. He also announced that the retired RTC employees would be allowed to travel in corporation buses free of cost. Regularisation of Contract Staff: Meanwhile, in a major decision, the chief minister announced that all the 4,300 RTC employees working on contract basis would be regularised with effect from Thursday. Meanwhile, the official division of the APSRTC would take at least a week more. Earlier, May 14 was set as the date for the corporation to work as two separate entities. However, with RTC employees of the two states going on strike, the division process was delayed. A week ago, vicechairman and MD of APSRTC N Sambasiva Rao said that a meeting was scheduled with Sheila Bedi Committee on May 13 to discuss the distribution of assets.