All India one-day strike called by trade unions against the alleged anti-labour policies of the Union Government was near total in the district on Friday.
As part of the strike, the RTC employees confined the buses to their respective depots by not operating a single service in the district. All the 980 services remained in the 11 depots. The members of trade unions took out rallies in support of the strike. Student unions associated with Left parties set fire to an effigy of the central government at Indira Chowk here.
All the bank employees also participated in the strike by closing down the operations. However, the ATMs functioned normally. All the private educational institutions declared holiday in view of the general strike. The employees associated with TNGO Association took out a rally in front of the Collectorate. The non-teaching staff of Satavahana University participated by staging a dharna in front of the administrative block.
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The general strike affected the Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) in Ramagundam region, which is lagging behind in coal production due to monsoon rains in Godavarikhani. All the trade unions including Telangana Boggu Ghani Karmika Sangham (TGBKS) affiliated to the ruling TRS also participated in the strike.
The coal production came to a grinding halt in all the 14 underground mines and four open cast projects in Ramagundam region affecting coal production to the tune of 70,000 metric tonnes. At NTPC Ramagundam, the employees attended to their duties by wearing black badges and generated power, but the contract employees abstained from their duties.
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Even as the general strike was near total in the SCCL coal mines in the Godavarikhani, Ramagundam-3 division achieved good production with 30 per cent attendance of miners.
Ramagundam-3 General Manager M.S. Venkataramaiah and GM (APA) Chandrashekhar said that they could achieve 96 per cent production in open cast project 1 and 2 and Adriyala Longwall Project (ALP) in spite of poor attendance in the morning shift. They said that the attendance of miners had increased from second shift onwards.
The coal production was 5,573 tonnes against a target of 5,833 tonnes in the two open cast projects. Similarly, the coal production was 2,000 tonnes in the ALP against the target of 2,800 tonnes. In GDK-10 underground mine also the production reached 136 tonnes against the target of 481 tonnes in the morning shift.