Congress hurls failure slur at KCR

Hyderabad: Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) President N Uttam Kumar Reddy has accused Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao of taking the Singareni Collieries workers for a ride.

• TPCC President N Uttam Kumar Reddy constitutes a committee to study the problem being faced by SCCL employees
• Accuses KCR of failing to fulfil promises to the workers

Addressing a media conference, along with INTUC National President G Sanjeeva Reddy and others, after holding a meeting on Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) elections at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday, Uttam Kumar Reddy said the Chief Minister had failed to fulfil his promise to provide the dependent jobs for SCCL employees. The Chief Minister, he said, has been trying to throw the blame on the Congress party in a bid to conceal the facts.

The Congress party had never opposed the move to provide dependent jobs. The party had in fact demanded that KCR made sincere efforts to make it a reality, he said. The TRS had promised regularisation of contract workers in SCCL. However, after winning elections, KCR took a U-turn and even claimed in the Legislative Assembly that there were no contract workers in SCCL.

There are more than 25,000 contract workers in SCCL. Uttam Kumar Reddy also slammed KCR for taking a U-turn on the issue of open cast mining. He said KCR, during elections, had promised to ban open cast mining. However, he approved 16 open cast mines after coming to power in June 2014. Similarly, he said that the TRS government had failed to fulfil the promise of constructing permanent houses for SCCL workers.

He said nearly 60,000 workers, who participated in Sakala Jana Samme during Telangana statehood agitation for 35 days, were promised payment of wages for the strike period. The government, however, had paid wages to those in service but denied the benefit to nearly 10,000 retired workers.

The TPCC chief condemned the TRS government for not fulfilling the promise of establishing a medical college and a NIMS-type super-specialty hospital for Singareni workers. Uttam Kumar Reddy said the TPCC had constituted a committee headed by former Chief Whip Gandra Venkataramana Reddy to study the problems being faced by the Sinagreni workers spread across five Lok Sabha and 24 Assembly constituencies.

The Committee would interact with workers and their families to list out the problems and challenges being faced by them. The Committee would also organise a 'yatra' of senior Congress leaders across the 24 Assembly constituencies. The TPCC and INTUC would work in close coordination in future, he said.