HYDERABAD: The Telugu Desam Party has sought the withdrawal of the controversial Government Order 5 on reforms in public enterprises and ridiculed Finance Minister K. Rosaiah's contention that it was only meant for seeking the views and warning employees.

Addressing a press conference, TDP leaders Y. Ramakrishnudu, N. Janardhan Reddy and U. Venkateswarlu said people were not so naive to believe the Minister. Everyone knows that a Government Order is issued after a thorough discussion and conveys its final decision.

`Highly irresponsible'

Mr. Rosaiah's casual statement clearly shows that the Government after daring to privatise/ downsize and remove 64,000 employees from APSRTC and Singareni developed cold feet following a strong reaction. In fact it was highly irresponsible on his part to say that there was no significance to the GO.

Using strong language they said it was unfortunate that the Congress was planning to retrench so many employees after failing to provide a single job of the 2.5 lakhs it had promised in its manifesto.

They recalled how propaganda was carried on against the Telugu Desam Party Government to garner votes from all sections of employees.

Attack condemned

It was also surprising that the party, which had been wrongly accusing the TDP of implementing reforms at the behest of the World Bank was actually going overboard in implementing all the bank's conditions in letter and spirit, they alleged. Should we call the Chief Minister a bonded labourer of the bank now?

At a separate press conference, two other leaders, E. Peddi Reddy and N. Rajakumari, condemned the attack on party workers by the Congress during the first phase of the gram panchayat elections in Krishna, Guntur, Chittoor and Anantapur districts.

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