TSRTC Employees' Union raises demand for DA

Hyderabad: The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation Employees' Union has urged the State government to pay the Dearness Allowances (DA), which was pending for the last 6 terms. Shockingly, another State-owned Telangana State Power Generation Corporation Limited (TSGENCO) has received the latest DA.

According to RTC unions, the drivers and conductors are equivalent to 'Class 3' of government employees, while the cleaners are 'Class 4'. Their pays including the DA, however, do not match other workers at the same level in other government and state-owned public sectors. We welcome the decision of State government for the releasing of latest DA with revised rates to the employees of TSGENCO, we Union urged government to pay the DA for the sister state run public corporation RTC with arrears immediately, which was pending for last 6 terms," urged former board of director of APSRTC and trade union leader M Nageswara Rao.

He also pointed out that the last revision of pay scale for RTC employees was done on April 1, 2017 and with the lapse of six years the pay scale was not revised by the government.

However, the revision was to be done in the year 2020 but still the long-awaited pay revision with fitment is yet to be implemented for the RTC employees.

For the RTC employees at the entry-level, the basic pay is Rs 10,880. Over and above, they have Dearness Allowances (DA), which will add about 5.3 per cent more to the salary every six months. However, for the last 6 terms, there were no DA to the employees.

"Since 2017, the cost of living has increased, and we employees are still receiving the six-year-old pay scale and no allowances. We urge the state government to revise the pay scale and increase compared to other sector employees and also to release the DA amount pending since the last 6 terms," urged employees.