VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy announced that one instalment of the pending Dearness Allowance (DA) would be paid to government employees by Dasara.
Addressing the 21st State Council meeting of the APNGOs (Andhra Pradesh Non-Gazetted Officers) Association, here on Monday, the Chief Minister said that an ordinance would be promulgated soon for implementing the Guaranteed Pension Scheme (GPS), which would replace the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS).
“The GPS is going to be a role model for other States. We came up with the new system after conducting a series of meetings and studying various pension schemes implemented by other countries,” Jagan stated.
He asserted that his government was committed to the welfare of its employees, who played a crucial role in the delivery of various benefits to the people. He also sanctioned five casual leaves for women employees working in the medical and health department.
The Chief Minister claimed that 2,06,638 permanent employees were appointed in the last four years after his party came to power, unlike the TDP regime that allegedly closed 54 Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) like Nizam Sugar Factory, Chittoor Dairy and Republic Forge.
“While Chandrababu Naidu resorted to retrenchments and shut down government organisations, the YSRC government pulled the RTC out of the red and regularised the services of 53,000 employees,” Jagan alleged. He further went on to say that 53,260 people were recruited and the services of 10,000 contract employees were regularised with 2014 as the cut-off year in the medical and health department, and justice was done to language teachers and 1998 DSC candidates.
Describing the employees as part of his family, Jagan said that 1,35,000 persons were appointed in village and ward secretariats within six months of YSRC coming to power in order to ease the administrative pressure on employees.
Besides increasing the DA to 16 per cent in all districts, a corporation for outsourced employees was created in order to remove the middlemen, the services of 14,658 Vaidya Vidhana Parishad employees were regularised, and the retirement age was increased from 60 to 62. Compassionate appointments were also made in the RTC, he elaborated.
‘Naidu closed down govt institutions, sacked staff’
“Despite the State Own Revenues (SOR) coming down during the pandemic, you worked hard to deliver the welfare benefits to the people and also played a key role in distributing relief to the flood-affected victims,” he added.
Quoting Chandrababu Naidu’s book ‘Manasulo Maata’, the Chief Minister said that the former Chief Minister followed a policy of retrenchment and introduced a contract system while selling away government lands to sycophants for peanuts.
“Naidu had said in his book that 40.6 per cent of the government employees were surplus and more than 60 per cent of the employees were corrupt. Hence, he closed down government institutions and retrenched thousands of employees,” said the Chief Minister.
He claimed that his government created village and ward secretariats, village clinics, RBKs, digital libraries and English medium schools, besides increasing the number of districts from 13 to 26.
Asking the government employees not to be carried away by the ‘crocodile tears of Naidu, his foster son and their friendly media’, the Chief Minister said that the TDP leader can never do justice to them.