Economic decay creeps into Telangana,

Hi-tech city brand image takes beating

The brand image of Hyderabad has taken a severe beating thanks to the on-going mass general strike by the government employees of the Telangana region.

The strike that began on Sep 13 gradually spread like wildfire with RTC staff, doctors, lawyers, municipal corporation employees, fourth class employees, workers of the Singareni Collieries and the power department employees joining it in phases.

Hyderabad and other Telangana districts never experienced such an intensity of the general strike in the last ten years as is being experienced now.

Coal production has come to a complete halt resulting in power scarcity in the state. The scarcity of power has crippled the industrial sector like never before and the public transport system has come to a grinding halt across Telangana and especially in Hyderabad.

As a result, several companies, business houses, corporate houses, factories, IT companies, pharma companies located in and around Hyderabad are witnessing only thin attendance of employees and workers crippling the production and services.

The power cut has seen the industrial production coming down by nearly 45 per cent after the strike began in the Telangana area.

Collection of water bills has stopped resulting in a loss of revenue to the tune of Rs.4 Cr to the Municipal Corporation daily. The electricity department has closed down 160 collection centers in the region due to lack of staff bringing a loss of Rs.200 Cr.

A loss of Rs.1 Cr is occurring on account of non-collection of property tax and advertisement tax on hoardings.

As the government employees are on strike, nearly 80,000 handicapped persons, widows and old people have not received their monthly pension.

Due to power shortage, cement production has come down in the state resulting in an increase of cement prices. On the other hand, most of the pharma companies are unable to meet the export targets and fear loss of orders in the near future.

Several IT companies like Microsoft, Google, IBM, Oracle and Del have reportedly served a warning on the government to solve the issue immediately as the problem has been threatening their existence in the city.

Reports said that while the private sector has suffered a loss in hundreds of crores, the public sector enterprises have suffered a loss in thousands of crores because of the strike.

Apart from the above, the administrative system has completely collapsed in the entire Telangana.