HYDERABAD: Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday invited the RTC staff to return to work from Friday. Though this may have come as music to the ears of the 49,000 employees, it meant commuters would have to spend more to travel by bus from Monday.
The state Cabinet, which met earlier on Thursday, approved a proposal to permit the RTC management to raise the tariff by 20 paise per km, which would net revenue of Rs 752 crore annually for the beleaguered corporation. To keep the TSRTC up and running, the chief minister said a sum of Rs 100 crore was being released immediately.
Briefing the media about the Cabinet’s decisions at his official residence of Pragati Bhavan, the CM said: “The unions have misled the employees.”
He then warned the staff, saying, “If you resort to any misadventure again, you will lose everything.”
He added that as of now, there are no plans to allow private operators on 5,100 routes. Rao said that as per Section 22 (1A) and (1B) of the Labour Act, the strike was illegal. “If we refer the matter to the labour court, the employees will suffer.”
Hinting that the RTC would be run without unions, he said, “Two employees from each depot will form the workers’ welfare council. A senior minister will be put in charge to address their grievances if any.”
Referring to the repeated claim that the Centre had a 33 per cent stake in the RTC, the CM said: “As per their share, the Centre has to give Rs 22,000 crore to the RTC. We are going to serve a notice on the Centre regarding this. I want to know whether the BJP leaders who are speaking against privatisation in the state will be able to bring Rs 500 crore for the RTC from the Centre.”
He said the four BJP MPs voted in favour of the Motor Vehicle (Amendment) Bill and the same parliamentarians were speaking against privatisation of the RTC in Telangana.
He recalled the days when he was transport minister in the TDP regime in the combined AP and said the RTC was at a Rs 13.80 crore loss then.
“But the RTC made a Rs 14.5 crore profit in no time. At that time, Rama Rao, a Union leader, had called for a strike. When I had why he wanted a strike, he said that he was calling for a strike so that the unions would flourish.”