The Telangana government has set a fresh deadline of midnight of November 5 for the striking Road Transport Corporation (RTC) staff to report for duties “unconditionally” and warned that they will be left to their fate if they do not heed.
“We are giving one more chance to the crew to resume duties as the government had no intention to snatch their livelihood. After all, they are also sons of the same soil”, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao said at a post-Cabinet media briefing on Saturday.
This is the second deadline set by the government after the lapse of the earlier one exactly a month earlier on October 5.
Mr. Rao said the Cabinet decided to issue permits to private operators to run 5,100 buses, including 2,100 private hired buses already in operation, if there was no positive response from the striking staff by November 5.
He explained that the RTC had a total fleet of 10,400 buses, of which the corporation ran 8,300 services while leaving the balance 2,100 buses to private operators. Of the 8,300 buses, as many as 2,600 were already condemned and 400 buses were on the verge of meeting the same fate. So, handing over these 3,000 services and the existing 2,100 private hired buses would constitute the total private participation and the RTC would own the balance 5,300 buses.
Mr. Rao said the Cabinet had discussed that the corporation was in no position to replace the condemned buses with new ones due to its loss-making position. Incidentally, with 5,100 private buses and corporation’s own 5,300 buses a “level playing” field would be created for public-private partnership in running buses. It would help in creating a healthy competition to improve public transport. He said the government would retain control over 5,100 private buses in fixation of tariff and deciding routes. A regulatory commission would fix the tariff and only uneconomical routes would be handed over to private services. The corporation would run profit-making routes and leave rural services run by “Palle Velugu” buses to private operators.
The Cabinet unequivocally rejected the demand of the RTC unions for merger of the corporation with the government as it was an impossible task. “There will be no change in our stand. We tolerated the irresponsible strike so far but not any more”.
Asked if the employees would get two months’ salaries if they joined duties by November 5, he said “let them join first”.
He justified the involvement of private operators, saying it was provided by the new Motor Vehicles Act which came into force on September 1.
Reminded that he had advocated in the past Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation as a partner in RTC services because it was a trend world over, he said the GHMC had indeed released ₹ 330 crore to the corporation in the first year when the partnership agreement was clinched. But, the RTC came up with a fresh demand for release of ₹ 480 crore in the following year, which was rejected by the GHMC.
