Vijayawada: Employees call off strike

Vijayawada: The employees of the State Government have withdrawn their strike notice as the two-day talks with the official committee fructified. As per the understanding arrived, the Government will have to bear an additional burden of Rs 11,500 crore. The JAC leaders claimed that under the given circumstances, they got whatever was the maximum possible.

Following the success of the talks, Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy had a meeting with the employees' JAC leaders on Sunday.

Reiterating that the employees were part of the government, Jagan Mohan Reddy said that he would be able to do many more good things with their cooperation. "Despite State's finances depleting due to the pandemic, the government is doing all that it can for employees and there is no place for it without employees' contribution," he said.

The Chief Minister urged the employees not to let vested interests interfere, as it can spoil the environment. He told them to bring any of their problems to the notice of the Ministers' Committee for resolving them. He stated that the committee will continue and would listen to any of their problems in future.

Elaborating the State finances, the Chief Minister said that exempting nine months of IR from the given 30 months will put an additional burden of Rs 5,400 crore and similarly with HRA from January another Rs 325 crore will be borne by the Government. With all the recurring expenditure every year, it would incur a burden of Rs 1,330 crore, which is additional to the earlier announced PRC expenditure of Rs 10,247 crore, totalling about Rs 11,577 crore.

He said that the State revenues fell sharply due to unfortunate circumstances, where the State revenue was Rs 62,000 crore in 2018-19, it should have increased by 15 per cent to Rs 72,000 crore in 2019-20, but fell to Rs 60,000 crore and the decline continued in the following years too.

During the meeting, the Chief Minister also discussed the abolition of the CPS policy and assured them to bring a right solution in such a way where the pensions will be increased exponentially. He said that the matter is being discussed and soon will be involving the employees too for expressing their opinions and concerns on the CPS. He also stated that the regularisation of contract employees as per the roster basis will soon take place.