Hyderabad: No pay cut for Health & police personnel

Hyderabad: The state government, which had announced wage cut to all employees, is now re-examining the issue and is learnt to have decided not to impose any cut in the salaries of medical and police staff, who have been part of the essential services and working round the clock to face the situation arising out of the deadly coronavirus. The salaries of the government employees will be credited to their accounts on Friday.

high-level meetandrasekhar Rao, who held a high-level meeting with officials of the Finance department, felt that there was a need to follow strict disciplinary measures to tide over the financial crisis that was looming large following the countrywide lockdown from March 22.

Official sources said that the major challenge before the government now was to pay interest on loans taken from different financial institutions like banks for the construction of irrigation projects, Mission Bhagiratha, etc. The only option before the government is to seek banks' permission to the postponement of the payment of interests which is around Rs 700 crore to Rs 900 crore. The meeting also discussed the possibility of going for the Ways and Means Advancement (WMA) being provided by the RBI.

Every state has been given an option to meet the expenditure through WMA when there is a big mismatch between revenue receipts and expenditure incurred by government on a monthly basis. If the amounts drawn beyond WMA limits set for individual state governments, it will be treated as Overdraft (OD).

After the formation of Telangana state, the government never utilised WMA and OD facility as the state registered a buoyant growth in the revenue collections and also overall growth. Now, the state financial situation is grim and would seek more Central funds to tide over the financial problems. Sources said that the Chief Minister had explained the situation to the Prime Minister on Thursday during the video conference.