THANJAVUR: Alleging that they were saddled with excessive work burden, some village administrative officers in Thanjavur Taluk approached the tahsildar to return the documents pertaining to their additional duty villages as a mark of protest here on Monday.
Leading the team, the Thanjavur District VAOs Welfare Association president Sorna Arivalagan said that only 45 VAOs were there to look after 63 revenue villages in Thanjavur taluk. The balance 18 villages were being monitored by 16 VAOs and that pointed to the work burden of the ground-level Revenue department personnel.
He also alleged that only excessive work burden led to the suicide of M. Venkatesan (34) of Thalayamangalam village in Orathanad taluk recently and the VAOs were only highlighting their plight.
“We came to hand over the documents pertaining to the additional duty villages to the Thanjavur Tahsildar Gurumoorthy who said that they need to talk to the RDO only on the issue.”
Mr. Arivalagan claimed that the VAOs were being pushed to assess the crop loss without adequate preparation and training. Despite knowing that the work involved compilation of a lot of details, the VAOs were being forced to execute the work expeditiously, he said.
Stating that they had been stretched beyond the limit, VAOs threatened to halt temporarily the crop loss assessment work and also demanded Rs. 50 lakh as compensation to the next of kin of Venkatesan and government job for his wife.
