RTC staff in the soup as loan requests put on backburner

Hyderabad: The employees of Telangana State Road Transport Corporation are facing difficulties to meet their financial needs due to the halt of loans including CCS, PF, SRBS, SBT loans from the trusts–societies, as the RTC has not been remitting the monthly recoveries from employees. Over 9,000 applications of various loans were pending in departments.

Non-clearance of employees' loans by the RTC Employees Thrift and Credit Cooperative Society (CCS), Provident Fund (PF), Staff Retirement Benefit Scheme (SRBS), Staff Benevolent Trust (SBT) are the major factors causing discontent amongst the TSRTC staff. Over 7,000 applications for payment with CCS and 2,000 applications with PF are pending since January.

"RTC employees are frowned as the loans were delayed, as all the loans normally drawn by workers to meet their financial needs such as CCS, PF loans, SRBS, SBT loans have been stopped by the societies-trusts for last several years as RTC management has not been remitting the monthly recoveries effected from the employees to the concerned," said M Nageswara Rao Trade Union Leader and Former Director Corporation, and urged the RTC management to desist from such unlawful activities and remit the recoveries to the concerned and ensure the release of all types of loans as thousands of employees are awaiting for the loans. These include short-term loans, educational loans and long-term loans.

He said "the RTC management had also diverted the PF amount and not paid to the PF Trust. Over Rs 1,400 crore including the share of employees is diverted, misused and not paid by the management." This is the hard-earned money of employees which should be returned. People had to borrow from outside at a high rate of interest, despite the RTC having this provision," he said.

Nageswara Rao pointed out that since January 2022, thousands of loan applications were canceled and are piled up. The CCS is not ready to give loans as the RTC management has stopped remitting the monthly amount. Whereas, other loans including SRBS and SBT were closed by the corporation four years back.

The employees demanded that the State government intervene to address their grievances. Given the fact that RTC employees are not entitled for pension, whatever small amount they used to get under SRBS and monthly interest on retired employees fixed deposits from TSRTC Employees CCS has been affected.

Chandra Kumar, an employee said "this has been happening for the past four-five years. Employees are unable to get loans. We usually take these loans for domestic purposes, health issues, children's marriages or education. It would get sanctioned within a week or two after the application. But due to a lack of funds, we are unable to get loans," he added.