Hyderabad, September 22: The 9th day of the ‘Sakala Janula Samme’ (people’s strike) that Telangana state government employees began on September 13 in support of a separate state, the sanitation wing staff of the GHMC joined the strike even as the state government struggled to cope with the worsening power crisis.
And with the power crisis worsening and the public transport in the Telangana region continuing to be hit, junior doctors in government hospitals too joined in the strike on Wednesday.
If neither the state government nor the striking employees blink very soon, normalcy in the region including Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts will be completely disrupted, said sources in state government.
The situation at Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) spread across four Telangana districts worsened on Wednesday with the coal workers at the Managalu mine in Khammam district, the lone place where some coal production has been happening since the strike began, stopping work after a worker attempted self-immolation.
As a result, coal production at Singareni Collieries, which stood at 1.5 lakh tonnes everyday, has dropped to zero. SCCL accounts for almost 40 % of the total thermal power generation in the state. The shortfall of power in the state rose to 1,200 MW on Wednesday from 740 MW on Tuesday. Transco sources said that the scheduled two-hour power cuts that began in the Greater Hyderabad region on Wednesday will either be officially extended if the crisis continues or unscheduled power cuts resorted to in addition to meet the situation.
Meanwhile, even as the streets of Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy remained to be deserted due to the absence of APSRTC buses on the roads, schoolchildren will continue to enjoy a long Dasara holiday with most educational institutions in the region deciding to stay shut as a precautionary measure till October 9, when the festival holiday ends. Originally, the Dasara holidays for schools and colleges were to commence on September 27.
Anticipating a worsening of the law and order situation in the Telangana region including the state capital in the event of the strike continuing, sources said the state government is eagerly awaiting the additional deployment of paramilitary forces, 50 companies of which has been sought by the state. While 291 RTC buses plied on the roads of Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts on Wednesday, the road accident involving an RTC bus at Krishna Nagar in the city in which an auto driver was killed, and the protests by TRS and other Telangana leaders outside Bus Bhavan, the RTC headquarters, has the state worried as to which way the strike will turn in the coming days. In the meantime though, the termination of the contract employees at RTC done on Tuesday, was kept in abeyance on Wednesday.
“Effective Tuesday-Wednesday midnight, we have stopped collecting the garbage and our strike will be indefinite in support of the demand for Telangana,” Vinay Kapoor, deputy general secretary of Bhagyanagar Municipal Employees Union that represents the interests of 20,000 sanitation and road cleaning workers employed on contract by the GHMC, told to media.
With the sanitation workers striking work and 900 garbage trucks lying idle, 5,000 tonnes of garbage that Greater Hyderabad generates everyday will pile up, triggering apprehensions that the general strike can raise a big stink in the coming days.
—-TOI