Telangana govt stuck between students and staff

Hyderabad: The Telangana state government is in a bind. With insufficient funds, it has to now decide whether to pay its own employees their arrears or whether to pay students their fees.

The government owes a massive Rs 2,500 crore in pay revision arrears to its employees and Rs 1,500 crore in fee reimbursement arrears to students. The government is under severe pressure from both sections to clear their arrears – pending for two years - by March 31 but its finances are so unbalanced, that it will be able to pay only one of the two groups.

The finance department has brought this issue to the notice of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and left it up to him to decide whether to pay the employees or the students.

The TS employees’ associations are bringing pressure on the government to pay them first. Resentment has been building up among the 3.5 lakh employees and 1.5 lakh pensioners who have been waiting since March 2015 to get their dues.

Meanwhile, student organisations, the Telangana Joint Action Committee, and Opposition parties are slamming the government for the delay in paying students’ fees and have planned agitation programmes to press their demand. Though the CM has promised to clear the arrears of both the groups by March 31, this is just not possible.

The Opposition parties cornered the government on the fee issue in the ongoing winter session of the State Legislature, forcing the Chief Minister to make a statement promising payment of Rs 1,500 crore in arrears by March 31.

But this has not gone down well with the TS employees’ leader and TRS MLA V. Srinivas Goud. “The fee reimbursement arrears are nothing new. It has been there since the scheme was introduced 10 years ago in undivided Andhra Pradesh. The arrears are paid in instalments in subsequent academic years to colleges and a majority of the college managements have no objection to this,” Mr Goud claimed. However, government employees are different, he says. “They are dependent on salaries and holding salary arrears for long will cause hardships to employees and their families.”

The government owes arrears from June 2014 to February 2015. The new pay scale was announced in March 2015 with retrospective effect from June 2, 2014, when the state of Telangana was formed, in appreciation for the employees’ active role in the Telangana statehood agitation.

‘Staff get salaries, students don’t’
Welfare departments for the Backward Classes, Minorities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are demanding that the cash-strapped state government pay fee arrears to students first, before it clears the arrears for government employees. They claim non-payment will affect careers of over 14 lakh students while there are only five lakh government emplo-yees and pensioners.

Moreover, they argue that salary arrears was an “unexpected sop” announced by the government which its employees had not originally demanded. It’s not fair on the part of employees to insist on payment right now by stopping funds for students, the officials said.

Under the system where the government reimburses all college students their course fees, many students who completed their courses two years ago were unable to enrol for higher studies or even get a job because their original certificates were withheld by the private colleges until they were paid by the government.

Students argue that government employees can afford to wait a few months more to receive their arrears as they get a regular monthly salary, but students cannot afford to wait any longer.