Hyderabad: The ruling TRS party Secretary-General and it’s Parliamentary Party leader K Keshava Rao today has appealed to the TSRTC employees’ Union leaders to withdraw their ongoing indefinite strike and come forward to hold talks with the state government.
In a statement here, Rao expressed displeasure at the suicides by the striking RTC employees. He said that the RTC employees should get ready to hold talks with the state government.
Except for the merger demand the government is ready to resolve all other issues of the RTC employees, Rao said. Making the air clear over the merger demand, Rao has said that CM KCR had never promised to merger the corporation with the state government. Rao said as the head of the TRS manifesto committee for the 2018 Assembly elections, he can make it clear that at no time did the party consider the merger of RTC with the State.
He made it clear that the employees of the corporation cannot dictate the state government on policy matters. He also said that being chairman of the manifesto committee, the topic of the merger of the corporation was not mentioned in their party’s agenda. “It is not possible to merger the public sector organizations into the government by changing its policies,” he remarked while making it clear that the state government is always ready to hold talks to resolve the problems.
He said it was the state government that had given RTC employees 44% increment in salaries in addition to a 16% interim relief. He also said that Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’s statement that there was no question of privatizing RTC was a significant one.
“The three-tier arrangement being considered by the government of 50% RTC, 30% stage carriages, and 20% private vehicles must be viewed as an experiment against the backdrop of the ongoing agitation and the conditions of the sagging bus transport sector in the country, particularly in the State,” he said.