The largest public transport organisation – the Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC) will be merged into the government sector and all the 43,373 employees will become government employees henceforth. The TSRTC which is in red financially gets a new lease of life with the government’s decision.
It has been ailing for a long time owing to declined public patronage and spiralling fuel and maintenance costs. The proliferation of private vehicles and the advent of auto-rickshaws proved fatal to the TSRTC. The corporation has 9,382 buses including the hired one and about 90 lakh people utilise its services daily.
The Corporation came into being in 1932 in the then-Nizam regime. It was named APSRTC in 1950 and renamed TSRTC after the formation of a separate Telangana state. It was a much-neglected corporation for decades in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh state. It was denied its due share of government funding and no attention was paid to putting its assets into proper use. The welfare of employees was always last on the list of priorities for the state government. The corporation had to borrow funds to pay salaries to its employees.
However, the situation now bettered as Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao went into minute details about what is ailing the corporation. The Corporation has got 92 depots, 11 regions, three zones, two workshops and a body-building unit. It has two tyre retreading shops, one printing press and a transport academy. The TSRTC has two staff training centres and two hospitals of its own.
The TSRTC owns 2,889 buses and 39 electric buses. It has 13,500 employees, 15,000 conductors and 17,000 drivers. The thousands of employees who have been waiting for the gesture erupted in joy and profusely thanked CM KCR for his humane decision. They distributed sweets and congratulated each other at bus depots across the State. The TSRTC managing director V C Sajjanar hailed the decision and congratulated the employees.
By Gollapudi Srinivasa Rao