6 months on, salaries continue to elude Panchayat workers

Mahabubnagar: The Gram Panchayati workers from across Mahbubnagar district on warpath for immediate release of their pending salaries for the past 6 months.

Earlier, on Monday, the members of Telangana Gram Panchayati Workers and Employees Union (TGPWE) affiliated to Center of Indian Trade Union (CITU) along with members of Gram Panchayati workers visited the district Collectorate and stage a protest demanding immediate releases of their pending salaries.

Later they gave a representation to Land Acquisition Special Collector Padmasri and also met with the district panchayat officer Venkateshwarlu and urged them to look into their issue and take immediate steps to ensure that their pending salaries are released immediately.

Speaking on the occasion, Nallavelli Kurumurthy, CITU district president, Mahbububnagar, said that the Gram Panchayat employees and workers who are rendering various services like road sweeping, garbage cleaning, garbage collection, releasing drinking water, maintaining the water pipeline and cleaning the drains and manholes have been suffering due to lack of salaries for the past 6 months. "Majority of the Gram Panchayat workers and employees are from backward and downtrodden communities like SC, ST and BC casts and they are working for a meager salary of just Rs 8,500 per month," Kurumurthy said.

"Despite very low salaries which is not at all sufficient to run a decent living and already they are suffering financially to run their homes, the State government has put their salaries pending for the past 6 months. This clearly speaks volumes that the State government is least bothered about the lives of poor and down trodden communities. We are demanding the State government to immediately release the pending salaries, or else we will be forced to take up a district wide indefinite strike," warned Kurumurthy.

Earlier, last week the CITU leaders and members of various Gram Panchayat workers unions took up a protest rally from Annasagar to the district Collectorate and handed over the representation to release salaries immediately, however, the then district Collector S Venkat Rao had promised to release the salaries in 15 days. Now even though 15 days have gone past, the salaries of GP workers is still pending and because of this the GP workers are going through severe financial problems and struggling to run their homes by making debts. Narayana CITU, vice president, Kanduri Venkatiah, Narasimhumu, Zakir and others were present on the occasion.