Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s unfulfilled promise of extending interim relief and securing the new Pay Revision Commission (PRC) report to hike staff salaries and pensions has split employees unions. A section of employees has threatened to boycott poll duties if the caretaker government failed to implement these promises before the Assembly elections by taking permission from the Election Commission. Before the dissolution of the Assembly, Mr Chandrasekhar Rao had promised to extend IR to employees and pensioners to compensate them for the delay in implementation of the new PRC.
He held a review meeting with employees unions in May and announced that IR would be announced on June 2, the State Formation Day. Later, the IR was deferred to August 15, but this too did not materialise. During the meeting, Mr Rao also announced the constitution of a PRC to make recommendations on salary hike. The commission has failed to submit its report to the government so far. When the state government employees were hoping for fulfilment of their promises in September, the sudden decision Mr Chandrasekhar Rao to dissolve the Assembly came as a shocker.
Employees fear that as caretaker Chief Minister, he has no powers to fulfil these promises. Angered by this, 46 associations of employees, teachers and pensioners issued an ultimatum to the government to resolve the issues or else they would boycott election duties. They demanded the scrapping of the Contributory Pension Scheme and restoration the Old Pensions Scheme. These associations came out of the Joint Action Committee and announced an agitation programmes against the government. Members of these associations will hold protest rallies on September 18.
