The Road Transport Corporation Employees Union has threatened to go on hunger strike even as they alleged that Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has not kept his promises a year after trade unions went on strike.
According to T Raji Reddy of the RTC EU, those who have retired are yet to receive arrears since 2018. He also said that pay scale revision had been overdue since 2015.
“The promises which the CM made have not been kept. We have been drawing attention, time and again, to these issues but there is no response. There is also a need for the RTC management and the government to talk to the unions as was the case in the past. Since these promises have not been kept, we are going to go on a hunger strike from December 1,” Mr Reddy said.
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He said that owing to the stalemate between the State transport undertakings of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on resumption of services between the two States, private operators had been making the most of the situation. This, he said, had hurt the TSRTC. “We are asking that an agreement be reached soon. It is a loss to the RTC,” Mr Reddy said.
Meanwhile, officials said the TSRTC had been plying between 2.5 lakh and 3 lakh km per day within the Greater Hyderabad Zone. Efforts were on to improve services and frequency. “We are doing all that we can to give passengers good service and connectivity,” an official said.
However, the number of kilometres run is less than pre-COVID period. For instance, according to data obtained under the Right to Information Act, 2005, the number of kilometres run in the GHZ in 2018-19 was 33.94 lakh km and in 2019-20, it was 28.05 lakh.
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The occupancy for 2018-19 was 70.21 and for the subsequent year was 69.24. Occupancy after resumption of services on September 25 was much lower on account of the pandemic. “We are taking all precautions, including sanitising of buses and other measures. We are also appealing for public cooperation,” an official said.