Hyderabad: State government employees and pensioners were a delighted lot after all of them got their salaries and pensions across the state on Friday, as against the BRS government practice stretching out the payments till the third week of the month.
They thanked Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy for streamlining the payments and aiming to pay them on the first from the next month.
Salaries and pensions were released phase-wise during the previous regime, district-wise, till the third or fourth week of the month, due to which employees and pensioners faced several hardships.
Telangana Udyogula Sangham chairman A. Padma Chary expressed his gratitude to the Chief Minister for fulfilling the poll promise of paying salaries and pensions for staff in all the districts at once.
He said, “Due to delay in salaries and pensions during BRS regime, several employees defaulted on repayment of loans. Their CIBIL scores were hit due to which banks denied them loans. We delighted to get salaries and pensions early in the very first month of Congress coming to power. We are grateful to the CM for promising to pay salaries and pensions on the first of every month from February 1.”
Employees' unions said that they had submitted several representations to the BRS government to pay salaries on time, but in vain.
“Only employees in Hyderabad and Rangareddy districts used to get salaries in the first week of the month. Employees in other districts had to wait till the 20th and sometimes, longer. The plight of pensioners was worse as they had to meet medical expenses,” said S. Satynarayana, a pensioner.
Nageshwar Rao, president of GO 317 Affected Teachers and Employees Union, said, “We are now hopeful that the government will solve other issues. The previous government had kept three of our DAs and paid only three of the 18 instalments of the arrears after the 2018 PRC. It did not even pay the spot valuation amount for evaluating Class 10 answer sheets for 2022-23. As employees affected by GO 317, we are hoping our issue will be addressed soon as it does not impose any financial burden on the government.”
M. Shailaja, an elated teacher, said, “We used to wait for salaries until 15 or even 20th of the month for the last one year. We faced problems in paying our EMIs which affected our CIBIL scores. We are happy now.”
