Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy has claimed that the Pay Revision Commission (PRC) report was drafted as per the wishes of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and questioned the silence of some employee union leaders, whom he accused of becoming the stooges of the Chief Minister.
Speaking to reporters here along with MLC T. Jeevan Reddy, TPCC working president Ponnam Prabhakar and others on Thursday, he said the fitment of 7.5% was unrealistic and too below the expectations of government employees. He said some union leaders had compromised the future of lakhs of employees for their personal benefits and asked the employees to launch an agitation. Congress will support your agitation if the demands were not met with, he said.
The TPCC chief also condemned the PRC’s recommendation for reducing the House Rent Allowance by nearly 6%. He said that the PRC has failed to consider the inflation factor while recommending cuts in HRA. Referring to the nearly 1.91 lakh vacancies identified in various departments of the State government by the PRC, he said the Chief Minister has been misleading the people of Telangana by giving contradicting and false figures on the existing vacancies. Since the actual vacancy figure is now available, the government should immediately fill up all the positions and not just 50,000, which KCR intended to fill up now. “Not even 25% of vacancies were filled by the TRS government in the last seven years.”
In a separate statement, CLP leader Bhatti Vikramarka, Manthani MLA, D. Sreedhar Babu and former MP Madhu Yaskhi Goud demanded 60% fitment to the employees and termed the PRC as a futile exercise of 31 months that deceived the employees who played a key role in Telangana formation.
Mr. Bhatti said while KCR spent hundreds of crores for constructing a house for himself, he reduced the HRA benefits to lakhs of employees. He said KCR always defames the employees citing major portion of budget being spent on their salaries and welfare. At the same time, there is no control on the waste of State funds for personal benefits of ministers and some officers.
He said KCR, Ministers and even some officials in the CMO were frequently using helicopters wasting public money unnecessarily. He also said some employee union leaders were compromising the interests of employees for their personal benefits.