Jagananna Salary Cut: AP Employees In Deep Shock!

The state government issued a GO in connection with the PRC and the employees are breathing fire over the injustice to them. There is information that Chief Secretary Sameer Sharma is likely to hold talks with the employees later in the day and give an explanation on the issue. The employees are gearing up to launch an agitation demanding withdrawal of the GO and implementation of a 10-point charter.

It is learnt that the government is also getting ready with a PowerPoint presentation to explain the basis on which the HRA and other aspects were finalised. However, the employees are demanding that the Ashutosh Mishra Committee recommendations should be implemented without any deviations. The GO issued by the government has completely ignored the recommendations made by the committee, AP NGO president Bandi Srinivasa Rao pointed out.

Rao said that the employees would hold executive committee meeting today and then decide whom to meet and discuss the issues. However, they did not show any inclination to meet the Chief Minister because they said they were disillusioned with the PRC as it was like a Reverse PRC which caused

Rs 6,000 – Rs 7,000 loss to each of the employees.

Yesterday, the state government employees launched a black badge protest against the state following its decision to do away with the pay revision commission system and implement the Central Pay Commission (CPC). The PRC is implemented by the state government while CPC is enforced by the Centre. While PRC is implemented every 5 years, CPC comes into picture every 10 years.

Further, the state government also scrapped the City Compensatory Allowance (CCA) which is given to shield the employees against inflationary pressures. The 23% fitment is another issue with which the employees are not happy, apart from the implementation of CS committee recommendations.

According to the recommendations, the HRA slab has also been reset at 8, 16 and 24% for employees living in towns with a population below 5 lakh, population below 50 lakh and in cities with more than 50 lakh population. The Secretariat employees would be given 16% HRA, while they had been drawing something around 30% HRA so far.

The employees demanded that the earlier HRA should be implemented and that CCA should be retained. “We took the issues to the notice of the CM and he promised that the CS would look into the issue but nothing took shape,” the union leaders said.

Employees, teachers and pensioners are unhappy that the government had done injustice to them. At the same time, they are also blaming the authorities for wantonly ignoring their requests.

For the last one week, we have been holding discussions with the authorities and government advisor Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy continuously but there has been not much use, the employee leaders lamented.