A meeting held on Tuesday between the State government and representatives of various employees’ associations concluded without a discussion on the contentious Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS).
Speaking to the media after emerging from the meeting, State Revenue Employees’ Association president Bopparaju Venkateswarlu said though the invitation extended to them was for a discussion on CPS, officials from the General Administration Department (GAD) at the last minute said that it was to discuss pending issues.
He said the employees’ associations insisted that they would attend any talks in the future only if the government was ready to discuss the Old Pension Scheme (OPS).
They demanded that the government release a timeline for payment of the arrears to employees and initiate measures to resolve non-financial issues as well.
He said that after giving a patient hearing to their issues, the Group of Ministers comprising Botcha Satyanarayana and A. Suresh and Adviser to the Government (Political Affairs) Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy assured them that they would try to resolve the issues at the earliest.
Referring to the CPS issue, they said a discussion would be held on ‘pension policy’.
On the proposal to increase the retirement age, they said first it would be implemented for employees of universities and Gurukul institutions and later replicated for public sector employees based on the advice of the Advocate General. They also assured implementation of transfers for village and ward secretariat employees soon and a decision on implementation of welfare schemes for outsourced employees.
The issues of employees’ health cards and appointment of the kin of employees who died of COVID on compassionate grounds also came up for discussion.
They said the Ministers’ committee would meet in March and try to find solutions to the issues raised by the employees’ associations.
AP NGO Association president Bandi Srinivasa Rao, association leader Y.V. Rao, State Secretariat Employees’ Association president Venkatarami Reddy, and Government Employees’ Association president K. Suryanarayana were present.
