TPCC head and Nalongda MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy today strongly condemned the Pay Revision Commission (PRC) for recommending a "mere" 7.5% pay hike, and alleged that the PRC's recommendations appeared to have been dictated by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao.
Speaking at a press conference alongside MLC T Jeevan Reddy and TPCC Working President Ponnam Prabhakar, the MP demanded that the state government agree to a wage hike of at least 43% for the
protesting government employees of the state.
Condemning the "miserly" proposed pay hike, he said that a 7.5% pay rise was "inadequate", and would not fulfil the needs of the government employees.
He then announced that the Congress would support the employees' agitation against the government, and would protest against it till it sanctioned a hike of at least 43%.
"The government employees played a major role in the Telangana movement agitation. Is this any way to repay them for their dedication to the cause of the state? They had risked their jobs and careers by launching the Sakala Janula Samme. Today, they are only expecting the government to agree to their legitimate demands. After all, the employees too fought for Telangana hoping that the new state would give them and their children a better future. It is deplorable that the CM is now shattering their dreams and continuously subjecting them to injustice with his step-motherly treatment. In fact, his recent decisions have been causing pain and agony to the government employees. I would urge the CM to remedy the situation at the earliest," the TPCC head said.
He also condemned the PRC's recommendation of reducing the employees' House Rent Allowance (HRA) by up to 6%, and said, "The PRC has failed to consider the huge inflation while recommending cuts in the HRA. It appears that the entire report was drafted under the influence of CM KCR. It is inhuman to implement any cuts in the HRA at this moment. If anything, the allowance should be amped up."
Speaking on the matter of government job vacancies in the state, Reddy said, "The PRC has identified nearly 1.91 lakh vacancies in various departments of the state government. This proves that the CM has been misleading the people of Telangana by announcing contradictory and false figures of existing vacancies - he had recently issued a statement announcing that the government would
fill 50,000 vacancies in different departments. But this claim hides the fact that the actual vacancies are four times the announced number. The TRS came to power in 2014 after promising the people that it would fill one lakh job vacancies. The same promise was parroted several times on the Assembly floor as well. However, not even 25% of the existing vacancies were filled by the TRS government in the last six years. It is high time that the government stop making false promises, and take measures to fill all 1.91 lakh vacancies."
Reddy also lashed out at some leaders of the employees' unions, and alleged that they were acting at the behest of the CM, and were, therefore, not fighting to protect the interests of the employees they had been elected to represent.
He advised the employees to launch an agitation against the TRS regime to seek justice, and assured them that the Youth Congress would support their cause wholeheartedly.
While at the conference, the leader also claimed that the previous Congress regime had been an employee-friendly government that had implemented PRCs at regular intervals, "unlike the current regime".
In a separate statement, CLP leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka also echoed the MP's views, and demanded that the government, which had been "deceiving" the employees since 2018, provide a 60% wage rise to the employees.
Later in the day, Reddy participated in the
swearing-in ceremony of the newly-elected Telangana Youth Congress president K Shiv Sena Reddy and other office bearers.
Addressing the gathering, he urged the Youth Congress activists to lead the fight against the injustices being done to the government employees and the unemployed youth of the state as both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CM KCR had "failed to address the problem of rising unemployment".
"While KCR had promised to give one job to every household, PM Modi had promised to provide 2 crore people with jobs every year. However, the CM has not provided even one job per village, and PM Modi has not created even 2 lakh jobs each since 2014. Instead, crores of existing jobs have been lost due to flawed economic policy-making both in the state and the nation," he alleged.
Referring to the latest findings of an Oxfam report released this week, the MP claimed that though a total of 12.2 crore people had lost their jobs during the lockdown alone, neither PM Modi nor CM KCR had displayed any concern for the affected persons.
"Both regimes have failed to take any steps to help the jobless youth or those who have recently lost their jobs. The TRS government has even failed to fulfil its promise of generating employment. It has not provided an unemployment allowance of Rs 3,016 per month to the jobless youth either. This, despite the fact that it had made the promise to do so nearly three years ago, before the 2018 Assembly election," he claimed.
The Congress had
flayed the government over the PRC issue yesterday as well.