Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday decided to wait for outcome of the petition pending before the Telangana High Court on privatisation of RTC routes before taking a final call on the RTC strike.
On the day, the CM held a marathon meeting with senior officials at Pragati Bhavan and reviewed the latest situation after RTC workers expressed their willingness to call off the strike.
Officials informed the Chief Minister that there is a chance of the High Court announcing its decision on privatisation of the RTC routes on Friday. The CM then told officials to wait till Friday before holding another round of discussions for taking a final decision on the RTC situation.
According to the CMO, the Chief Minister felt that in view of RTC reeling under huge losses, the state government, given its economic condition, is not in a position to pump in funds and restore RTC to its normal condition.
The CM further pointed out that around Rs 640 crore was required to pay salaries to the employees and clear arrears of PF. It would not be possible for the state government to secure these resources at this juncture. Thus, it would be better to adopt a wait-and-watch approach till the judiciary take a final call on privatisation of the RTC routes.
Meanwhile, RTC workers, who are now ready to retur to duty, without achieving any of their demands, are searching for success points in their story of failures.
RTC JAC leader G. Madhava Rao said: “We are considering the strike as unfortunate than failure. Though we failed to achieve our demands, we got the goodwill of 90 lakh commuters of RTC. The unity of RTC workers stand at new heights and no worker has obeyed the government’s diktat.”
