On warpath, government employees set March-end deadline for Andhra Pradesh to meet demands

While the nitty-gritty of their action plan was yet to be finalised, their intent to launch serious protests that include a total work strike was clearly evident as they met Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan on Thursday, 19 January, seeking his intervention.

The success of last year’s 3 February “Chalo Vijayawada” rally, in which lakhs participated, embarrassed the Andhra Pradesh government, leading to the ouster of the then DGP Gautam Sawang because he failed to avert the march.

The pending issues

There are approximately 4.45 lakh government employees in Andhra Pradesh, and their main grouse is that their salaries are being delayed continuously.

Non-payment of pending DA bills and restrictions on the withdrawal of GPF amounts are also a matter of concern for them.

“There has not been even a single month in the last few years when the government employees received salaries in the first week, let alone the first day of the month,” said Andhra Pradesh Government Employees Association president KR Suryanarayana.

“We are missing the EMIs of loans we have taken, and this is impacting our credit history. Our CIBIL scores are spoilt now, due to which we are not getting fresh loans from banks. We are not getting money when there is a need for it,” he explained.

The recently-held general body meeting of the employees’ association decided to launch a stir in April.

Rough estimates suggest that the government owes at least ₹10,000-12,000 crore to its serving employees and retired staff under several statutory and terminal benefits to which they are entitled.

Blame on the government

“There are scores of retired employees who are still waiting for their benefits even two years after they left the post. They don’t know which day in the month they will get their pension. How can they survive in old age?” asked the association’s general secretary G Askara Rao.

“To avert any protest that causes inconvenience to the government, we have launched efforts as part of which we met the state governor, who is the custodian of the government employees’ service matters according to Article 309 of the Indian Constitution. We sought this intervention in solving our long pending issues and demands,” he added.

Other members of the association said the state government had been postponing the solution without any tangible outcome.

It was only in September that the government heaved a sigh of relief as it put forth the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS).

The employees blinked and withheld the Million March they had planned for 11 September.

According to the original plan, the government employees demanding rollback of the CPS had proposed to take out the Million March.