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SRTC employees continue strike for 2nd day, inconvenience to public

KT NEWS SERVICE. Dated: 8/4/2012 11:13:06 PM

SRINAGAR, Aug 4: The State Road Transport Corporation (SRTC) employees continued with the agitation on the second straight day today against the forcible possession of the corporation’s property by the state government.
All services offered by the corporation, including the inter-state, intra-state and school buses, remained suspended.
The SRTC is the only state-owned bus operator between Srinagar-Delhi, Srinagar-Ladakh and Srinagar-Jammu. Besides, it offers pick-and-drop transport to many private and government schools, and most secretariat and bank employees. The corporation was the chief means of transport for the Amarnath pilgrims.
Given the essentiality of the services, the strike has been causing acute inconvenience to the public including the tourists who prefer travelling by road. All the bookings for yesterday and today have been already postponed while those scheduled to travel in the coming days are also in dilemma.
“I wanted to book a ticket to New Delhi for Wednesday, but the strike has messed up the whole plan. Now I may have to take the plane or taxi, which is not something I wanted,” Andy Jackson, a tourist from Canada, said.
The strike, called by SRTC employees’ union, resulted from the government’s forceful possession of the SRTC property—several kanals of land with many buildings and workshops—at Tourist Reception Centre (TRC) here. The government has planned to use the land for establishing a cultural museum, and provide SRTC alternate land at Nowgam.
While the union has moved court against the transfer, the government seized the property at a time matter was still undecided. But the court, hearing the second appeal in the case, yesterday suspended the order of the Deputy Commissioner here.
The president of the union, Shakeel Kuchey, said due to heavy rainfall they could not take the court order to the police and reclaim the possession.
“Our programme is that we will go to police on Monday and take the possession of the property,” he said.
He said the strike would continue until the solution is worked out.
“All our services will remain suspended until that time,” he asserted.
Of late, the SRTC has been running in losses resulting in delay in the payment of salaries to the employees who often take to roads in protest. The government set-up several committees from time to time to find a long term solution to the problem, but nothing substantial has surfaced yet. And on the contrary the government has been transferring the SRTC property to other departments, which, the union believes, is akin to slow-poisoning of the corporation.
Meanwhile, the Hurriyat Conference (M) condemned the government’s decision to seize the SRTC property. The conglomerate called it a “deep conspiracy.”
“Using the SRTC land for establishing Tehzeeb Mahal is a deep conspiracy. It is unjust and will affect the livelihood of hundreds of SRTC employees,” it said in a statement issued here.
The conglomerate has urged upon the state “to stop encouraging moral waywardness on the name of culture.”
“The government is not just encouraging moral waywardness on the name of culture, but it is coming up with new policies for it. The practice shall be stopped forthwith,” it said.