HYDERABAD: Enthused by the success of transport minister Botcha Satyanarayana in convincing the RTC staff from Telangana to attend to work, the government is making all-out efforts to break the strike by other sections of employees.Incidentally, the Telangana Employees Joint Action Committee (TEJAC) has mellowed and is showing signs of willingness to hold talks with the government after participating in the Sakala Janula Samme for more than a month.According to sources, the cabinet sub-committee headed by the deputy chief minister assured to consider most of the service-related demands made by the TEJAC during the preliminary talks but the chief minister was not inclined to consider the demand for withdrawal of GO 177 and ESMA, and for an inquiry into attack on TEJAC chairman K Swami Goud.Reddy is also reluctant to treat the strike period as special leave and to lift all the cases registered against employees.“The first topic that comes for discussion after the end of any strike is treating the strike period as special leave. Employees do not want to lose salary as they compensate for the work not done during the strike period. Further, it will spoil the service record of employees. We also do not want to be bothered with the cases,” said a TEJAC leader. He said that though their main demand remained to be formation of separate Telangana, they cannot hold talks with the government without considering the preliminary demands.While the chief minister took a tough stand against the striking employees, deputy chief minister C Damodara Raja Narasimha is playing a soft cop to persuade the employees. He has been mediating between the employees and the chief minister to end the deadlock at the earliest. It is learnt that the government sent signals indicating that it had no intention of withdrawing the cases registered against the employee leaders but assured that the cases would not be pursued further. The government has also promised to pay some amount as salary advance but was firm on 'no work, no pay', citing court's orders. If the government is ready to relax the norms at a later stage, the salary will be paid considering the fact that the employees will work for more hours to compensate for the work evaded during the strike period. Though no talks were held between the cabinet subcommittee and the TEJAC leaders on Sunday, there might be major efforts to end the strike during the week ahead. Officials are confident that they might make some progress in this regard within the next three or four days given the fact that RTC staff and teachers have postponed the strike indefinitely.
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