VIJAYAWADA: Minister for Cooperation and Transport Kanna Lakshminarayana has appealed to the RTC unions not to resort to strike once again, as the Government is taking a sympathetic view of their problems and set up an expert panel to prepare an action plan to address their problems.

Talking to presspersons after inaugurating the helpdesk at the office of the Deputy Transport Commissioner here on Sunday, the Minister said the Government had come forward to concede 19 out of the 23 demands put forth by the unions.

Usually, any employees' union would bother about betterment of service conditions and salaries of its members without taking the strengths and weaknesses of their organistions into consideration.

But, the unions in the RTC were different.

"I wholeheartedly appreciate their concern for strengthening the corporation. A majority of the demands put across by the Joint Action Committee pertain to retrieving the corporation from the red," he said.

The Minister, however, said that the unions should have flexibility in their approach.

Instead of pressing for acceding to all their demands, they should be satisfied with whatever had already been conceded. The remaining problems too would be addressed in course of time. It's not that the Government wanted to ignore their other problems.

A major step

They should give some time to the Government, which was working out a plan to save the RTC and find a permanent solution.

The Government scrapped the high-power committee and its recommendations and issued a GO to this effect.

This was a major step in the direction of addressing the grievances of the unions.

Besides, the Government also promised the employees that various departments would shoulder the onus of repaying the concessions offered to different sections of people.

Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy announced a package in which the motor vehicle tax on RTC buses was also brought down considerably.

Against this background, he hoped that the employees' unions would "understand the situation" and wait for the expert panel report to come.

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