KCR asks the RTC workers to join by Nov 5

Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao on Saturday opened a window of opportunity for the striking TSRTC employees and workers to get back to work, setting a deadline till midnight of November 5 for them to report for duty without any conditions.

In a move aimed at bringing the 28-day-old indefinite strike to a closure, the Chief Minister, in an appeal to the RTC workers, said: “We have nothing against the workers and their families. The government only wishes them well. Please accept the government’s offer and return to duty by midnight of November 5 and the government will take care of you.”

Addressing the media after a four-hour Cabinet meeting at Pragathi Bhavan here, he said the Cabinet had unanimously and firmly rejected any suggestion of merger of the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation with the State government. The Chief Minister also announced that the Cabinet decided to permit private bus operators on 5,100 routes in the State. He clarified that only the “uneconomical routes” which caused losses to RTC would be given to private operators. He also clarified that the bus charges would be decided and monitored by a regulatory body.

The RTC has



about 3,000 buses which are condemned and have to be replaced. The privatisation of routes will take care of this issue, he said

The Chief Minister said the Cabinet also decided that the RTC unions can’t try to browbeat the government with blackmail tactics. “The government advised the unions not to go on strike after it appointed a committee to look into the RTC affairs, but they went ahead with it. Their demands are endless,” he said, adding that once the strike is declared illegal, all relations between the government and the workers and the unions ceased to exist.

“The arrogance and meaningless demands of the RTC unions has been the bane of the corporation, and its financial health, which has sunk to abysmal depths despite the State government pumping Rs 4,500 crore in the past five years. The TRS government’s financial assistance to the corporation in one year equals what was done in five years by the government between 2009 and 2014 in undivided Andhra Pradesh,” Chandrashekhar Rao said, adding that the financial statements of the RTC are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, and nobody can question these figures.