Hyderabad, August 04: Government has invoked the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) to face the situation arising out of the proposed general strike of the Telangana employees. GO 166 was issued on Wednesday, invoking the act. Only Finance, Pay and Accounts and Treasury departments were brought under ESMA for the present. As strikes are banned under ESMA, if employees abstain from duties, they would not only loose their jobs, but also face the prospect of going to jail.
It may be mentioned here that payment of salaries and bills became difficult recently when the Telangana employees went on strike. To avoid recurrence of such difficulty, ESMA was applied to finance and treasury departments initially. Government is gearing itself to apply ESMA to other departments also.
We should wait and watch how the employees who have been stating that they could not be cowed down with ESMA would react now.
—-AndhraH