Urdu Academy contract staff seek salary hike

Hyderabad: Even as the state government gears up to celebrate Ramzan festivities in grand way, the foot soldiers who ensure the smooth conduct of these celebrations, the contract employees of Urdu Academy, are crying for attention, as the plea of their salary hike has been in limbo for the past two years. Some 200 contract employees are running pillar to post for pursuing the matter with the higher officials, but the proposal is caught in red tape.

Following the shutting down of the Urdu Academy's libraries across the state, these 200 contract employees who were later attached to Minority Welfare Department and to some other allied wings to help in implementation of government schemes.

Since then, they became foot soldiers and have been assisting in the implementation of government schemes like getting admissions of children in TMREIS schools during Ramzan festivities and during Christmas, ensuring smooth distribution of government gifts and other schemes.

However, the proposal of hiking their monthly salaries, which was forwarded to Minorities Welfare by the then Principal Secretary (Minorities Welfare) Syed Omer Jaleel in 2017, is yet to get be implemented. "A government memo was issued to hike the remunerations, but it remains pending. Each time, we try to pursue the matter, we are asked to visit a different department.

The irony is that due to elapsed time the entire process is being repeated after almost two years," lamented Syed Aqueel, general secretary of Telangana State Urdu Academy Computer-cum- Libraries Employees Welfare Association.

Currently, these employees, some of whom are working for about 20 years, are getting salaries in the range Rs 5,000 to 10,000. A handful of seniors are receiving a little more than Rs 10,000.

Alleging apathy in the implementation of the memo, the contract employees have pointed out that those who were recently 'outsourced' were getting better salaries. The proposal included a hike from Rs 5000 to Rs 12,000 (Office sub-ordinate), Rs 8,500 to Rs 15,000 (Librarian) and Rs 10,000 to Rs 17,500 (Faculty).

"All of us have been toiling for over 10 years, and now we are ensuring that every government scheme gets implemented successfully. But no one is paying heed to our problems. We thought at least this Ramzan, our salaries would be hiked," Afshan Abrar, vice president, said.

These contract employees started working in 1999 under Deepam Package for Urdu Academy. These centres being run from rented buildings slowly went defunct and now the situation is that the building owners have been getting rents for the locked centres since several months. "Interestingly, the authorities are not interested in hiking our salaries, but the rents for these closed centres were double," pointed out Aqueel.