Ex-servicemen are peeved over a number of issues directly related to their welfare and allege negligence by the successive governments in the State.
To register their strong protest, members of the Maaji Sainikula Hakkula Porata Samithi (Federation of Ex-Servicemen Struggle for Rights) observed relay hunger strike at Dharna Chowk, demanding immediate intervention of the Jagan Mohan Reddy government for solution to their problems.
Addressing the media, samithi’s founder president K. Kumar said the fraternity was being given a raw deal in allocation of gram sachivalaya posts. “Of the total 1.27 lakh posts, 2,545 of them have been allotted for ex-servicemen. But of them, only 215 posts have been filled due to failure of the authorities to define the qualifying marks for this category,” he said.
Mr. Kumar said while the ex-servicemen appreciated the government move of creating separate corporations for every section to implement focussed welfare programmes, their fraternity was once again ignored. He demanded constitution of a separate ex-servicemen welfare corporation, on the lines of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Punjab.
He said a large population of the former employees of the armed forces were financially in dire straits. The government should think of absorbing them in services like the security wing in the Endowments Department, anti-theft squad in the Electricity Department, marine policing, Excise wing and other such departments.
Demands
Their other demands included issue of white ration cards to all ex-servicemen regardless of their economic status, increase in quota for exservicemen’s children in educational institutions to 3%, establishment of an Army Training Centre in every district in the State and government initiative to honour ex-servicemen at regular intervals in recognition of their valuable services to the country.
Massive protest
The two-day protest will end on Tuesday. Mr. Kumar said if the government failed to heed their pleas, they would take the protest to the Secretariat and if State continued to ignore their welfare, they march to the India Gate and stage a massive protest in the national capital.
