Revenue employees working under severe pressure: Bopparaju

Anantapur: AP Revenue Services Association (APRSA) is holding its 17th State council meeting in Vijayawada on October 1 to discuss threadbare the problems confronting the revenue employees and bring them to the attention of state government, according to APRSA president Bopparaju Venkateswarlu.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, Bopparaju observed that the revenue employees in the state were working beyond their capacity and a lot of work was being squeezed out beyond their will and mental strength.

An atmosphere has developed in the state wherein revenue employees were being involved in every job not connected to them with tahsildars becoming rallying point for execution of even medical and health programmes.

The revenue employees and functionaries are made to operate with utter disregard for Standard Operation Procedures (SOP) and with hands tied financially. No budget was given during the past 4 years for the day-to-day operations of revenue offices.

The employees are under massive pressure with ever increasing government programs, unable to do justice to any work. There is no end to new government programmes and we have reached an overwhelming stage of being unable to contain or take in more, thus reflecting on the quality of work turned out.

Orders are being passed on without taking ground realities and time frame into consideration at the state level. What should be done in 100 days is being ordered to be done in 15 days. The revenue functionaries like the tahsildars and the field staff in the mandals are compelled to work all seven days of week and far beyond working hours with utter disregard for even festival holidays.

Electoral rolls revision and resurvey job is given to again revenue employees by the Election Commission while all other departments are exempted. They are also made the scape goat by political parties in the event of electoral discrepancies. The revenue employees are bearing the brunt of suspensions in case of electoral rolls irregularities.

The creation of 13 new districts have added to the woes of revenue employees with poor amenities and no budget for equipment and infrastructure.

Even district collectors are under severe pressure when higher ups dump responsibilities on them to extract work or results within a very narrow time frame. The decision makers are taking decisions without taking ground realities into consideration for achieving targets.

Revenue minister Dharmana Prasada Rao, Special Revenue secretary Sai Prasad, special chief secretary and collectors of Krishna and Guntur Dilli Rao and Venugopal are being invited to the meeting so that they will have an in-depth idea of our inner frustration and bottled-up pressure.

APRSA general secretary CH Krishna Moorthy, district president Kulayappa and other office bearers participated.