Hyderabad, September 23: The denizens of Hyderabad can breathe easy. With the sanitation workers of GHMC agreeing to resume work and start lifting tonnes of garbage piled up on the streets, people can look forward to stink-free roads.
But the woes of commuters, already hit by the RTC strike, are set to compound further from Friday midnight with autos also going off the roads in support of Sakala Janula Samme, which entered 10th day on Thursday.
Shivanandam, general secretary of Telangana Trade Union Cell, said autos would not ply on Saturday and Sunday. Adding to the woes of passengers, all rail services are likely to be hit severely on both days as pro-Telangana activists have given a call for a 48-hour rail roko. The South Central Railway decided to cancel 55 express trains and 222 MMTS services due to the proposed rail roko
In Hyderabad, the state-run RTC operated 378 buses with police protection, but elsewhere in Telangana buses remained confined to depots. The striking RTC staff did not allow even the newly-recruited contract staff to take out buses from the depots, causing hardships to commuters in all the 10 districts in the region.
Worse still, Telangana doctors working in the government hospitals joined the mass general strike on Thursday boosting the morale of the T-forces across the region. Announcing that only emergency cases would be attended to in all the government hospitals, members of Joint Action Committee of Telangana doctors said they have decided to stop rendering other medical services, including performing family planning operations. JAC warned the government against invoking provisions of the Essential Services Maintenance Act (Esma). “Otherwise we would boycott even the emergency services,” a striking doctor of Gandhi hospital warned.
Meanwhile, the power situation continues to be grim as hydel generation has declined further due to diminishing inflows into major reservoirs. While the demand on Wednesday was 258 million units, the APTransco supplied 245 million units on Thursday. While 48 MU of power was generated from hydel stations on Wednesday, only 45 MU was generated on Thursday. Sources said 1,500 MW was purchased from outside to meet the shortfall. Efforts are on get more coal stocks for thermal power plants, which are running less than their original capacity.
Singareni Collieries is suffering a daily loss of Rs 28 crore as production of 1.5 lakh tonnes of coal has come to a standstill, while the RTC, which otherwise operates 10,000 buses, is running into losses of Rs 7 crore every day.
Pressure is mounting on the government to postpone the AP Public Service Commission’s Group-I services mains exam scheduled from September 25 to October 3 in view of the ongoing general strike. With the RTC staff continuing their strike, the 5,000-odd candidates are worried about reaching the exam centres.
Despite Telangana JAC threatening to intensify SJS and bringing more services under the strike fold, chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy tried to put up a brave front, saying that the government would not hesitate to take tough action against the striking employees. He directed prompt payment of salaries to the employees who are attending their work, while indicating salary cut for those participating in the strike.
Telangana employees JAC president Swamy Goud meanwhile found fault with political leaders for not joining the strike and for not submitting resignations. “Though it is Sakala Janula Samme, why is it that there is so much traffic on the roads and rush at the shopping malls. It appears only the employees are on the strike and not others,” he lamented.