GUNTUR: As many as 612 contract employees in the Panchayat Raj department across the district have not received their salaries in the last 25 months due to technical reasons and alleged apathy of officials concerned.In 2018, following a Supreme Court judgement, the State government issued an order implementing timescale payment to part-time and full-time contract employees working in various government departments in the state prior to November 25, 1993.
Following this, the pay scale of 612 employees in the Panchayati Raj department was upgraded. However, instead of giving salaries from the 020 salaries head account, like the time scale employees of other departments were being paid, the Panchayati Raj department employees were included in the 010 account.
After two years, in March 2020, the director of Treasuries and Accounts of AP raised an objection as there is no budget provision under 010 salaries head account and stopped paying salaries to the employees from the account. Following this, Panchayat Raj officials gave instructions to district panchayat raj officers to take immediate action for payment of salaries from gram panchayat general funds. But citing “insufficient funds”, the sarpanches have refused to clear the salaries. With this, the employees including assistants, bill collectors and sweepers, are not getting salaries.
AP Grama Panchayat Time Scale Employees Association secretary Y Ramaswamy said that the basic salary of assistants is Rs 16,000, bill conductors Rs 14,000 and sweepers Rs 13,500. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the sweepers worked as front-line workers, and that too without receiving salaries.
“The commissioner of Panchayat Raj and Rural Development Kona Sasidhar, former commissioners Girija Shankar, E Krishna Mohan, and Principal Secretary to Government Gopal Krishna Dwivedi issued memos to panchayat officiclas and sarpanches asking them to clear the pending salaries from general funds. But citing fund crunch, they refused to pay salaries for the past 25 months,” Ramaswamy said.