Hyderabad: BJP state senior leader Gudur Narayana Reddy on Saturday demanded that the state government take steps for the immediate release of salaries of sanitation workers of gram panchayats.
Salaries of the sanitation workers were not released for the past four months. Even though the workers have been holding protests to press for the release their salaries, the government has not responded.
He said that a Dalit sanitary worker had died by suicide recently as he did not get the salary for four months. Most of the families of sanitation workers are on the verge of ruin, he said.
He said that most of the panchayats earn meagre revenues through property tax, which was not enough to meet the monthly expenditure. They mostly depend on the Finance Commission funds and matching grants of the state government, he said. But the state government had diverted the funds. He said the Centre had released Rs 3,500 crore to zilla parishads, mandal parishads and gram panchayats in December last year.
He said the government was solely responsible for the non-payment of salaries, and said that governance had gone haywire.
He said that in view of surge in the Covid cases and flu cases it was imperative to keep up the sanitation in the villages and towns on a war footing. Any negligence would have a catastrophic effect on the people of the state, he said in a release.
