Traffic went haywire as huge rallies were taken out to the Collectorate by various trade unions in response to the nationwide call for ‘jail bharo' by central trade unions on Tuesday.
The Two Town police set a new record by arresting as many as 820 on a single day. Two Town CI T. Mohan Rao said they took the protesters under preventive arrest and later released them.
The employees of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, under the banner of various trade unions, including the INTUC, took out a rally from the main gate to the Kurmannapalem junction and staged a rasta roko.
Traffic came to a halt for two hours. Later, the Steel Plant police arrested nearly 150 activists, including D. Adinarayana, N. Rama Rao, Gandam Venkat Rao, N. Ramachandra Rao, and V. Dhanaraju.
Demands
Speaking at a meeting at Collectorate, CITU national secretary Swadesh Dev Roye and all-India general council member T.P. Roy Choudhary explained how all the trade unions had come on to a common platform to bring pressure on the Centre to reverse its “anti-labour” economic policies. The call for protest was made by the central trade unions, including the INTUC, the AITUC, the CITU, the HMS, and the BMS at New Delhi a month ago in protest against anti-labour policies of the Central Government, disinvestment in profit-making public sectors, price rise, minimum wages fixed at Rs.10,000 for a contract worker, increase in bonus ceiling, and seeking an end to contract employment in permanent nature jobs.
The VSP unions wanted continuation of VSP in the public sector, allotment of captive mines to cut down production cost, lift ceiling on provident fund and gratuity, and social security for workers.
