Hyderabad, October 02: Normal life has remained paralysed in the Telangana region for the 19th consecutive day on Saturday due to the Sakala Janula Samme or the people’s general strike demanding statehood for the Telangana region.
Likewise, the strike by the RTC employees of Telangana have entered 13th day and the medical strike too has entered 10th day on Saturday. The strike has crippled the entire administration as employees of the Secretariat, SCCL, RTC, electricity, GHMC, water board, teachers and employees in other services have joined the ‘Samme’.
Almost 10,000 buses have remained off the road in the Telangana region on Saturday. Of nearly 3500 city buses, less than 400 buses plied and most of them were used to transport the employees hailing from Seemandhra regions to the State secretariat under tight security. The RTC has set up a special counter at MG Bus Station to refund the money to the passengers who reserved their ticket to visit their native places for Dassera and Deepavali.
While the non-striking employees got their full salaries on Saturday, the striking employees held protests in the Secretariat against the implementation of ‘No Work No Pay’ rule. Meanwhile, the Ration Dealers Association has announced that they would be joining the general strike soon. Sources indicated that the ration dealers might join the strike from Monday. This might cause lot of hardship to everyone in view of the festival season.
Meanwhile, the electricity department is preparing to impose more power cuts across the State. While Hyderabad will have daily power cuts for four hours, district headquarters and towns will have six hours of power cuts. The mandal headquarters will have power cuts for seven hours; villages will face of 12 hours of cuts and agricultural sector will continue to get six hours of supply instead of seven. However, the industries will not get power for two days in a week.
——Agencies