Telangana Congress MPs N. Uttam Kumar Reddy (Nalgonda), Komatireddy Venkatreddy (Bhongir) and A. Revanth Reddy (Malkajgiri) met the Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday and urged him to intervene in the RTC issue.
Expressing their anguish over the ‘inhuman’ manner in which the RTC employees were being treated, they reminded that the Central government holds 33% of share in the RTC and therefore, it was its duty to protect the institution and its employees. They also complained against RTC Managing Director Sunil Sharma for his ‘rude’ behaviour against the employees.
The MPs first sought an appointment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss the issue, but the PMO apparently said the appointment might be arranged only on Wednesday.
Stating that nearly 50,000 employees have served in the RTC for decades, Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy urged Mr. Gadkari to play a pro-active role in resolving the issue.
Responding to the request made by Congress MPs, the Union Minister assured them that he would convene a meeting on Thursday, according to a statement issued here.
Mr. Uttam Kumar Reddy said Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, was neither resolving the demands raised by the RTC employees, nor allowing them to re-join duty unconditionally. “The Chief Minister’s directions to the RTC management not to take back the employees shows his inhuman attitude and vindictiveness,” he said and asked whether Mr. Rao was trying to drive nearly 50,000 families to suicide.
The Congress MP said Mr. Rao came to power promising to provide a job to at least one person in every household. “He has not only failed to fulfil this promise, but set to remove the existing employees,” he said.
He said the RTC under the previous Congress regimes was a world-class institution and even entered the Guinness Book of World Records for being the world’s largest and best public transport organisation. All the past governments treated the public transport as a welfare measure and not as a profit and loss mechanism.
He assured that whenever the Congress party comes to power at the State or the Centre, it would cancel the privatisation and restore the jobs of the RTC workers.
