Articles
43% Fitment Hike in Salary to TTD
Dt: 17/6/15
43% Fitment Hike in Salary to TTD Employees
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
After a 12 year long struggle the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) had been able to get separate statehood for Telangana. The government officials hailing from Telangana also participated in the struggle for separate Telangana . Therefore the TRS government has good reason for celebrating their achievement and so giving 43% increase in the salaries of its officials described as fitment.
2. Government servants belonging to the Seemaandhra region opposed the formation of Telangana State and conducted a very strong and long Samaikyandhra movement for weeks together. The separation of Telangana is meaning financial hardship and great deprivation to the remnant Andhra Pradesh. Is it in celebration of this hardship or statehood for Telangana that the A.P government officials are also given a fitment increment of 43%?
3. The APSRTC employees asserted that they are also government employees as the RTC is owned by the government. They agitated for the fitment increase of 43% in their salaries and the money -strapped GOAP yielded and gave them the fitment increment!
4. Then it was the turn of the TTD employees. Notwithstanding that the TTD is not a government department, the politically chosen TTD Board graciously gave a 43% increase as fitment hike in salary to its employees. This costs Rs. 6 cr per year for the employees still in service plus 1 cr for TTD’s pensioners , a total of Rs. 7 cr per year.
5. A suggestion has been made that since the Government of Andhra Pradesh as well as the central government are using government funds to subsidise the religious pilgrimages of Muslims & Christians, the TTD may at least use its funds to give frees transport and darshan and stay for one lakh poor Hindus especially dalits and the tribes among them, every year . This would confirm their faith in and prevent conversion of them by the predatory religions.
6. The politically selected TTD Board took the political decision and not the dharmic decision of helping Hindu devotees of Lord Balaji’s to give the poor to have darshan of the Lord. Does this extravagance of 43% fitment boon to TTD (not government) employees offend the conscience Hindu devotees due to whom the TTD Board is getting revenues of Rs. 2,500 cr per year?
7. Instead of the TTD Board deciding to construct some more accommodation for the rich pilgrims to stay on the hills, why can it not build more choultry accommodation for the poor devotees coming from very poor districts like Srikakulam, Vijayanagaram, Visakhapatnam, Palamuru, Induru, Mahboobnagar, Adilabad etc? Here again the politically selected seem to be pleasing to those who can fund the parties . (440 words)
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