Revenue staff skip duties in EG, cite Sankranti festival

Kakinada: The four- day Kakinada Beach Festival promoted by tourism department under Swadesh Darshan is being deprived of the services of revenue employees, the key administrative sector in East Godavari district.

The programme which started on January 12 will conclude by January 15 at NTR beach in Kakinada rural mandal.. Along with extra burden of work for revenue employees in the last two months, the importance of Sankranti festival among Telugu people was another reason for their denial to work from second day onwards i.e from Friday to Sunday The decision of East Godavari Revenue Services Association (RSA) kept 7,000 at dissect level and 2,000 in Kakinada division without their services for the four day mega event.

When contacted on the absence of staff, East Godavari RSA president Pitani Trinadha Rao explained in detail that the decision of their association to skip the beach festival from second day onwards.

”Since November first week, we have been entrusted with the job of propagating cashless transactions, later with verifications relating to issue of new PDS cards. Later, we were busy distributing Christmas and Chandraanna Sankranti Kanukalu,” he added.

Because of this hectic work, some of the revenue employees had to put in extra work, said RSA president. “We have communicated our decision to district collector who gave us sympathetic hearing,’ he added.

When his attention was drawn to the announcement of Deputy CM, N Chinarajappa on Thursday that the government is prepared to sanction leave to revenue employees who attended duties between January 13 and 15 after Sankranti, Trinadha Rao said that they have not yet received any such communication till now.

Meanwhile, the authorities at district level entrusted with the duties of Kakinada Municipal Corporation employees to attend beach festival duties .