Telangana local body staff pay hiked

Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Friday announced a steep hike in salaries for elected representatives of the panchayat raj and urban local bodies.

The salaries of zilla parishad chairpersons have been increased from Rs 7,500 per month to Rs 1 lakh. However, such an exponential hike will not burden the government much since there are only nine ZP chairpersons in the state who enjoy “Cabinet rank”.

The mayor’s salary has been increased from Rs 14,000 per month to Rs 50,000. Salaries of ZPTC members were hiked from Rs 2,250 to Rs 10,000 and for MPTCs, from Rs 750 to Rs 5,000. Salaries of corporators and sarpanches have also been hiked.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao made a statement to this effect in the Legislative Assembly. “With a view to improve the dignity of local body representatives and to improve their services to people at the grass-root level, the government has decided to enhance the honorarium paid to them.”

The salary bill has now jumped from Rs 13 crore to Rs 103 crore.

The quantum of hike did not go down well with some sarpanches, who staged a flash protest in the Secretariat and blocked the felicitation ceremony for panchayat raj minister K.T. Rama Rao.

The elected representatives had planned to felicitate the minister to thank him for increasing their salaries, but some sarpanches raised slogans demanding salaries of Rs 10,000 per month against Rs 5,000 announced by the government.

Tension prevailed at the conference hall in the D-block where the ceremony was planned with sarpanches divided in support of and against Mr Rao

The police intervened and dispersed the agitating sarpanches.