The Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) employees on the 3rd of March started a kind of protest for the Credit Cooperative Society (CCS) fund.
Thousands of employees wrote to K. Chandrashekar Rao, the Chief Minister of Telangana, and asked to resolve the CSS fund issue.
As part of the protest, employees are sending mass letters to the chief minister demanding the immediate release of Rs. 1,000 crores owed by the corporation to CCS.
A total of 10,000 letters to this effect have been prepared and posted with the signatures of the employees depot-wise.
The TSRTC has been utilizing the amount deducted from the salaries of the employees for quite some time without crediting it to the CCS, resulting in arrears of around Rs. 1,000 crore. Another Rs. 800 crore was borrowed by employees in the past. Of this, employees have long demanded the immediate release of Rs 1,000 crore and revival of the procedure of giving loans to employees.
However, the TSRTC officials said it would take time as they did not have the funds and that they’d be able to pay only if they receive financial assistance from the government. In this context, employees have decided to send letters to the Chief Minister asking him to see to it that the issue is resolved.
Venkati Goud, working president of the TSRTC Employees Union said that the corporation has used up CSS funds of 1000 crores. He said, “This has been happening for the past few years. Employees are unable to get loans. We usually take these loans for family functions, marriages, or our children’s education. It would get sanctioned within a week or two after the application. But due to a lack of funds, we are unable to get loans.” He said that they doubt if the TSRTC officials take their concerns to the higher authorities.
In the letters, the employees expressed their issues caused by CSS arrears. Due to the lack of funds, the employees would not be able to avail loans, retired employees who had deposited cash in CCS may not receive interest, payments cannot be made to those who had terminated their membership in CCS and retired employees cannot receive the settlement.
As per the rules, a CCS General Body meeting must be convened twice every year. However, these meetings did not take place in the recent past due to the strike and later due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The CCS members have decided to hold an emergency meeting this month to address the current concerns.
About 250 people representing the employees, TSRTC MD, other members, officers, and ex-officio members should participate. But the TSRTC officials are allegedly planning to prevent the meeting from taking place fearing opposition from employees.
They will continue to send letters until their demands are met.
Stay tuned for further updates.
