Police used mild force to disperse the agitating workers and employees at RTC bus stand here on Monday when an unidentified person suspected to be one of the agitating workers hurled a stone on a standing bus resulting in the damage to its windscreen.
As a result, there was a commotion all around the bus stand and even the waiting passengers ran helter-skelter. The police hit a couple of workers with lathis and took four workers into custody. Later, they escorted the passengers into buses. The entire bus stand was replete with lathi-wielding policemen.
The agitating workers, meanwhile, put boulders to prevent the buses from going out of bus stand. They later took out a rally from bus stand to the office of the Revenue Divisional Officer where they sat in for dharna for a few minutes before submitting a memorandum to the officials.
On the other hand, the RTC authorities as usual could run over 100 hired bus and a few RTC buses to different areas on the sixth day of the workers’ strike.
Strike intensified
Sangareddy Staff Reporter adds: The ongoing strike of the RTC employees had entered sixth day on Monday with agitators stopping buses coming from depots.
Some of the agitators prevented ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leaders, who came to extend support for the ongoing strike alleging that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had failed to keep the promise made during election campaign.
Finally, the TRS leaders were forced to leave that place. At several places the employees held ‘Vanta Varpu’ programme.
Differences crop up
Warangal Special Correspondent adds: Differences seem to have cropped between the unions as the RTC strike entered the sixth day here. The Telangana Mazdoor Union and Employees Unions organised separate protests on Monday.
Both the unions have collectively served the strike notice to the management and have been holding protests jointly for the past five days. Many workers in the district were upset over the divide in the unions and fearing that it could impact the strike.
“The main objective of the strike is to prevent the movements of the buses from depots and not to cause disturbance on the roads,” TMU regional secretary E.S. Babu said, adding that they want to hold peaceful demonstrations.
The TMU members staged protest demonstrations at RTC depots during early hours preventing the buses from moving outside. Later, they took out rallies to district Collectorate. They staged demonstrations there and submitted a memorandum to district officials.
Meanwhile, the members of Employees Union formed a human chain at Hanamkonda Chowrastha. They took out half-naked rally to the Collectorate “We intend to bring pressure on government drawing its attention,” EU leader E. Venkanna said.
The RTC Warangal regional manager E Yadagiri informed that on Monday they were able to operate 175 hire buses and 194 RTC buses for the convenience of the passenger.
