Andhra Pradesh: Government staff serve notice on PRC, other demands

Amaravati: Government employees association leaders led by AP JAC and Amaravati JAC on Wednesday served a notice to the state government on their future action plan seeking solution to their demands, including implementation of Pay Revision Commission recommendations and pending Dearness Allowance (DA).

The AP Joint Action Committee and the APJAC Amaravati leaders met chief secretary Sameer Sharma at the Secretariat here and served the notice, expressing serious displeasure over non-fulfilment of assurances given to the employees.

"Only the government is to be blamed for this imbroglio. Though claiming to be a employee-friendly administration, the government so far remained indifferent to our issues," leaders of the two JACs Bandi Srinivasa Rao and Bopparaju Venkateswarlu said.

As per the agitation programme chalked out by the JACs, all government employees would attend work sporting black badges from December 7 to 10 in all offices, protest rallies in all taluks and revenue divisions on 13, dharnas across the state on 16, dharnas in all district headquarters on 21 and public conferences at Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, Eluru and Ongole from December 27 to January 1.

Talking to reporters after meeting the chief secretary, they claimed the state government owed at least Rs 1,600 crore to employees in the form of provident fund, general life insurance, leave encashment and other benefits.

"We want the government to respond and resolve our issues before we step into the second phase of our agitation programme after January 6. We feel only the Chief Minister's intervention could break the deadlock," they said.

Some of the major demands of the employees are release of pending DA, abolition of contributory pension scheme, regularisation of contract employees and village and ward secretariats staff, streamlining of employee health cards and hike in salaries of outsourced and other contractual staff.

"The government promised to take a call on implementing the PRC recommendations by October-end but so far there has not been a word on it. It promised to resolve other pending issues by the end of November but that promise too remained unfulfilled," they pointed out.

Srinivasa Rao and Venkateswarlu said more than three years have lapsed since the PRC submitted its report but the government did not take any action on it except giving a 27 per cent interim relief to employees.

"The government so far did not even give us the PRC report. Does it contain any issues that should be hidden from employees? Contrary to tradition, the state finance minister never once discussed the PRC issue with the employees associations," the JACs leaders said.

"What the finance minister has been telling is total lies. He is only creating a wedge between the government and the employees," they alleged.

Bopparaju Venkateswarlu said earlier government advisor Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy and others promised to solve their issues by November-end. He said that the employees extended cooperation to the state government for the past three years despite denial of benefits. He said the same cooperation was extended during Covid pandemic even though the government imposed cut in salaries.