AP government-employees talks end in stalemate

Amaravati, Dec 3 (PTI): Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy's one-line response that the long-pending Pay Revision Commission issue would be resolved ''in a week or ten days'' notwithstanding, a meeting of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Services Joint Staff Council with a group of secretaries ended in a stalemate here on Friday evening as the government allegedly refused to make public the Commission report.

During his visit to the flood-hit areas in Tirupati this morning, a person was heard raising the PRC issue with the Chief Minister, to which Jagan responded that it would be sorted out in a week or ten days.

The employees associations, emerging from the three-hour-long meeting, announced that they would go ahead with the planned agitation programmes from December 7 as the government failed to hand over the PRC report and address their other concerns.

AP Joint Action Committee chairman Bandi Srinivasa Rao and AP JAC Amaravati chairman Bopparaju Venkateswarlu told reporters that there has been no response from the government on the contentious PRC issue.

''Without giving us the report, what can we discuss? The government did not reveal at least the major contents of the Commission report, so we made it clear that nothing can be discussed without that,'' they said.

Along with the PRC, other main issues of the employees like payment of GPF, life insurance, retirement benefits, scrapping of the contributory pension scheme should also be resolved, they asserted.

Srinivasa Rao and Bopparaju said the government was doing grave injustice to its employees though it has been implementing welfare schemes for other sections.

AP Secretariat Association president Venkata Rami Reddy said they were hoping that the Chief Minister himself would invite all the employees associations for talks soon and resolve all issues.

The other day, the JACs served a notice on state Chief Secretary saying the employees would launch their first phase of agitation from December 7 and take up the second phase after January 6 if the government did not concede their demands.

Against that backdrop, the Joint Staff Council meeting was held but that did not break the deadlock.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)