Abid Bashir
Srinagar, Nov 4: With around 4000 striking employees of Srinagar Road Transport Corporation planning to march towards Jammu Thursday, the government Wednesday offered ‘golden handshake’, clearing doubts that it was going to revive the loss-registering Corporation.
Talking to Rising Kashmir, Finance Minister Abdur Rahim Rather said it was very unfortunate that meetings between SRTC employees and the government failed. 

“Even their (employees’) meeting with Chief Minister Omar Abdullah failed to break the deadlock,” Rather said.
He said government was ready to offer ‘golden handshake’ to all SRTC employees, provided they agree to it. “If they are ready, we can move ahead on it,” Rather said. “I will manage the amount to be given to them if they go for voluntary retirement scheme (VRS).”
Rather said the government had kept Rs 13 crore as budgetary support for the SRTC employees for the present fiscal. “Of this, they have received Rs 12 crore in two phases. They can get the remaining one crore too.”
A senior minister of the National Conference-Congress ruling dispensation, wishing not to be named, said the job of government was to give budgetary support to the SRTC, not to manage the salaries of its employees. “It is a corporation, which means a public sector undertaking. It has Managing Directors like any other PSU. All successive regimes have been giving full budgetary support to it. However, the condition of Corporation still worsened,” the minister said.
He said due to the strike of SRTC employees, the State has been incurring losses to the tune of Rs 20 crore a day. “It has been more than two months they went on strike. One can imagine how much the State has suffered,” the minister said. “It is not possible to revive the Corporation at this juncture.”
He said despite having a fleet of at least 700 trucks, the Corporation failed to be a profitable one. “When a private bus owner manages to earn profit, why did not the SRTC drivers?”  
The SRTC has been running losses over past two decades and has not been able to manage the salaries of its employees. Following the deteriorating condition of the Corporation, the employees have not received their salaries over the past six months and have, as a consequence,  registered several protests so far, and even received canecharge in return but to no avail.
The employees are demanding revival of the Corporation, besides release of their pending salaries.
They tried every bit to build pressure on the government and even took to the streets with their families, setting ablaze books and uniforms of their children. Moreover, the SRTC Workers' Union is mulling to march toward Jammu on Thursday.
Talking to Rising Kashmir, chairman of the SRTC Workers' Union Shakeel Kuchay said the employees were ready for VRS at least on the pattern of JK Bank employees.   “We are ready for VRS. Let the government talk to us on it. If government can’t give us money on the lines of JK Bank employees, it should give Rs 10-15 lakh to each employee, besides compensation as per the Company’s Act 1956,” Kuchay said.
He said it was, however, unfortunate that the government was providing budgetary support to other PSUs as these are governed by the Industries Act.  “As per the SRTC Act 1950 (later amended in 1976), we were supposed to give cheapest service to the citizens. We were doing that till 1990. After the eruption of armed rebellion, we bore the brunt of militancy as many of our drivers got killed,” Kuchay said. “Not a single driver who got killed over the past 20 years received compensation.”
On why couldn’t SRTC manage to earn profit, Kuchay said private transporters were offered Rs 20,000 to ferry men and material during Kargil war but none of them agreed to go there. “It were the SRTC employees who put their lives on the line and ferried men, machinery and the material to Kargil. In every election, we were asked to ferry material to the polling booths as private transporters were scared.”
He said during Ghulam Nabi Azad’s regime, they received directions to ferry numberdars, chowkidars and old citizens on 50 per cent concessional rates “How could we earn profit in such circumstances,” Kuchay said.  “It will be a big shock to the employees who have given their life, blood and sweat to the SRTC, to see the Corporation being closed down.”