Monday, 5 September 2011

SRTC mess

SRTC land sell plan falls flat, as none showed interest

Tahir Mushtaq

JAMMU, Sept 5: The State Road Transport Corporation (SRTC) has’ deferred’ its ambitious plan to sell its land resources to meet the salary component of its employees and other liabilities of the corporation.

According to sources some legal problems and lack of interest shown by the buyers towards the landed property of the state run corporation, forced the corporation to delay the commercial exploitation of the landed assets, which was decided after the agreement between SRTC employees union and Management in March this year.

It is pertinent to mention here that corporation had decided to dispose of about 5 kanals of land at Pathankote-Dalhause road and 138 kanals of land at Pampore to meet the liabilities of its employees and pay off debts to J&K Bank Limited. As per the agreement reached between the management of the corporation and the office bearers/workers of the SRTC Union on March 10, 2008 and subsequently modified on March 24, 2008, the Corporation was to explore commercial exploitation of its landed property in order to meet the liabilities.

The Clause 3rd of the agreement of March 10, 2008 reads as “Release of 42 slabs of COLA w.e.f. 31.03.2008 out of proceeds of economic exploitation of the assets of the Corporation”.

However J&K SRTC workers union leader Didar Singh said that they will not accept the salary without COLA and want permanent solution for the future.

“Every time the management betrays us and to get salary, we have to take path of agitation”.

Adding, “This time we will not accept anything short salary plus 42 slabs of pending COLA”.

The SRTC the state carrier has a fleet of 1300 vehicles, but due to the mismanagement at different levels the corporation has become one of the loss making enterprise in Jammu and Kashmir.

Although the state government was providing a budgetary support of Rs 17 crore per year but most of it was used to pay off debts incurred by the corporation during last over a decade.

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