On Monday night Government employees in Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh called off their 42-day-long strike for a separate Telangana state.
Leaders of (TEJAC) agreed to call off the strike following talks with Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy.
Over 400,000 employees, who were on strike since Sep 13 as part of a people's strike to demand the creation of a Telangana state, will return to work from Tuesday.
The chief minister agreed to all nine demands of the employees. The government and TEJAC leaders signed an agreement after several rounds of talks during the day.
The government agreed to treat the strike period as special leave and to pay the salaries by approaching the high court to seek exemption from 'no work no pay' rule as a special case.
The government agreed to form a committee to monitor implementation of Government Order 610 relating to redemption of employees belonging to other regions of the state.
With TEJAC's outcome,all sections of employees and workers in the region have called off their strike.
According to Assocham, the tangible loss of goods and services due to strike in the first 15 days itself was in excess of Rs 10,000 crore.
The major loser so far has been the Singareni Collieries Ltd, the state-owned coal miner, which has been paralysed with over 90 per cent of its 65,000 strong workforce striking work since September 12, when the Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) had got into the general strike mode. The daily production of 1.5 lakh tonnes has dropped to less than 10,000 tonnes per day on average.
The opportunity losses could be even higher, says Assocham. The strikes have lead to frequent power outages and transport, administartion in Telangana was at a standstill. This has pushed up industrial costs by over 15 per cent and dented the State's image as a lucrative investment destination.
The general strike of employees only aggravated the problems of people and did not solve the Telangana issue. In earlier meetings JAC leaders felt they were taken for a ride by Telangana politicians. They realised that the ordeals were to the employees who were not getting salary with no work, no pay policy of Govt; whilst the general public including employee's families were distressed with no power, no money , no transaportaion even to do festival shopping - to the contrary, it was gossiped that the political leaders happily shopped in Delhi for Dassera for their families, sent their children to corporate schools and are not effected with the strike. The rumoured deal of 1000s of Crores worth of contracts awarded to the polictical leaders seemed to have demotivated these Employees who were on strike, giving a general impression that they were used as pawns for selfish gains by backstabbers & betrayers of Telangana moment. It is to be observed that some of the Employees even expressed their dilema about the "sincerity" of political leaders who sent their children to study abroad but provoking Employees go on 'indefinite' strike. Many factors such as these lead to call off Employees strike with eforts from Krian Kumar Reddy's initiatives.
HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN!!!!
