RTA staff back in drivers seat

HYDERABAD: With the Telangana employees calling off their 42-day-long strike, the 12 Road Transport Authority (RTA) offices in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts were on Tuesday flooded with applications for vehicle registrations and driving licences.This being festive season, the rush for registrations is usually high and added to that, the over month long strike has resulted in piling up of a number of applications.Officials arrived fairly early around 10 a.m and heaved a sigh of relief after checking their computers.“Thank God! They are functioning well despite being shutdown for 42 days!” one of the officials at the RTA office, Khairatabad, exclaimed.For the applicants, the end of stir on the eve of Deepavali came as a godsend. But their impatience at having to wait for over a month showed as they stood in the serpentine queues.“I have visited the RTA office at Khairatabad three times in the last one month to get my bike registered because I had to pay fine to the traffic police for driving an unregistered vehicle,” said J Srinivasa Reddy, a resident of Ameerpet.MD Waheed, an autodriver, too echoed the same views.“Though I am at last going to get my three-wheeler registered, I am not happy.Should one wait for this long?” he fumed expressing the hope that there won’t be another strike before his work was done.The anger was almost palpable as some youngsters almost lost their jobs because of the strike by the RTA staff. P Venkateswara Reddy, a resident of Nandinagar (Banjara Hillls) and a cab driver, who has been waiting to get his licence renewed, said, “I had to delay joining Wipro by one month as I had to renew by licence. Now, I hope to join in a week. Because of the strike, I have been going jobless for a month.”There are about 279 employees at the 12 RTA offices in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts to receive applications and issue certificates.“All the employees have been directed to work an hour more to clear the rush of applications and pending ones,” joint transport commissioner G Panduranga Rao told Express.The extra effort will be put in for the next 20 days at least.Rao said, “We have taken measures to reduce the number of applications and issue certificates in 20 days. For this purpose, we have allotted more staff members to the counters where there is a heavy rush,” Rao explained.Deputy transport commissioner of Ranga Reddy district C Ramesh also said the same but expressed confidence that in his district, it won’t take more than a fortnight to clear the applications.“Today, there is only 10 per cent extra rush than normal, but we expect more than 50 per cent rush after Deepavali,” he said.Meanwhile, a few RTA employees appeared disappointed that the stir had been called off without their major demands being met.