Kin of the employees of the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) who died while in service and were promised jobs on compassionate grounds under Bread Winner Scheme (BWS), staged a demonstration at Pandit Nehru Bus Station here on Friday, in protest against the inordinate delay in receiving their appointment letters.
The demonstrators comprised job applicants from families of RTC employees who died between 2016 and 2019, who were promised jobs, called for interviews, followed by verification of their certificates, but have been kept in a waiting mode for last five years.
“Only a few applicants from the families of employees who died before 2015 were given jobs, while the remaining were denied appointments on some pretext or the other. In the hope of getting a job in the RTC, we desisted from joining any other work and now, the management says that only the kin of the employees who died during 2020-21 would be appointed on compassionate grounds,” said K. Annamaiah, whose father K. Raju died in 2016, while working as a shramik (helper) in the organisation for 30 years.
“It is five years since he died and I am still waiting for my appointment orders,” he said ruefully. Thirty-two-year-old Annamaiah did not work anywhere these five years, as he would have become ‘ineligible’ for recruitment in the RTC.
A. Harshavardhan is a B.Tech graduate but is sitting idle, waiting to fill the shoes of his father A. Venkata Rao, who died in 2016 while serving as an employee of RTC. “We have put his marriage on hold for this job. After a long wait of five years, the officials now say that there is little they can do about it since the government has not given its nod so far,” said Harshvardhan’s mother Lakshmi.
Anitha Appasani, wife of A. Sambasiva Rao who worked as a driver in Guntur-II depot and died in June, 2016, is in the same boat. “This is so unfair. Leaving us (around 900 job-applicants) high and dry, the management has announced that it would provide jobs to only the kin of employees who died in the last two years,” she said, informing that they had been running from pillar to post in the last five years in vain.
“First they asked us to wait saying that since APSRTC was merged with the government department Public Transport Department (PTD), we’ll have to wait for service rules to be formulated. Now, they say that we cannot be considered for appointment under the Bread Winner Scheme as the deceased worked for the APSRTC and not for the PTD,” said Ms. Anitha.
Stating that they received a meagre ₹2,000 to ₹3,000 as pension, they appealed to the government to consider their plight and provide them the promised jobs.
