Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) State General Secretary Ch. Narasinga Rao has strongly condemned the State government’s decision to establish the ESI medical college in Amaravati, instead of Visakhapatnam, which has the highest number of public and private sector industries.

In a statement, Mr. Narasinga Rao appealed to the TDP-led alliance government to abandon its attitude that Amaravati is synonymous with Andhra Pradesh. As a 500-bed ESI hospital has already been announced by the Sheelanagar center in Visakhapatnam city, the adjoining ESI medical college is expected to be constructed in Visakhapatnam. Besides, there were 14 lakh ESI subscribers in north Andhra, and the ESI hospital and medical colleges would cater to their needs, he said.

Mr. Narasinga Rao said the TDP-led government has failed to fulfill its election promise of merging Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) with Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) or providing captive mines to the factory. He claimed that the company was now trying to make VSP incur losses and hand it over to private players. He ridiculed the TDP-led government for announcing the construction of the Arcelor Mittal steel plant at Nakkapalli, instead of trying to save VSP.

Mr. Narasinga Rao sought to know what was the value of the deals made with private investors during the TDP rule between 2014 and 2019. He also claimed that the state government had prepared a plan to replace 12,700 buses RTC in the state by electric buses. The plan was to acquire each bus at a cost of ₹2 crore and hand them over to private operators. He also alleged that the government was planning to sell the land owned by APSRTC across the state to private players.

He appealed to all workers to join the protests to be held across the state on December 25 as part of the nationwide protest call by central trade unions against the Centre’s decision to privatize Chandigarh Electricity Board. He recalled that the YSRCP government was defeated as it implemented the privatization policies of the BJP-led NDA. He condemned the TDP-led alliance government for pursuing the same policies.