Warangal: RTC employees denied permission to join duties

Warangal: As was predicted, the TSRTC authorities refused to allow the employees who gathered at the nine bus depots spread across the erstwhile Warangal district to join duties on Tuesday morning. The employees turned up at bus depots following the call given by the Joint Action Committee (JAC), ending 52-day long strike. The government deployed huge police force at all bus depots to avoid any untoward incident.

The police who cordoned off the road leading to bus station and bus depots diverted the traffic to other routes in Hanamkonda. They prevented the employees from proceeding to regional manager's office.

Later, the police arrested the employees including women and shifted them to a private function hall. Women employees were seen sobbing while they were being shifted by the police. The Warangal region that operates over 940 buses daily with about 4,200 permanent employees could operate nearly 80 per cent of services with hired employees. They hired 402 drivers and 597 conductors continuing the bus services.

Meanwhile, Warangal employee JAC Secretary E S Babu accused the police of creating panic at the bus depots and they were not being allowed to report to duties. "We all reached bus depots with our identity cards and the police were not allowing us," he said.

On the other hand, Warangal Regional Manager of RTC A Sridhar has said that he has not received any orders from the higher officials to allow the employees to resume their duties. He said that measures are being taken to run as many buses as possible for the convenience of passengers.