MADURAI
More than 250 Village Administrative Officers (VAO) from Madurai district, associated with Tamil Nadu VAOs Association, sat on a day-long fast here on Friday to urge the government to fulfil their charter of 20 demands.
The association, which has already begun boycotting work related to issuance of certificates online and staged an overnight dharna on Wednesday throughout the State, has threatened to go on an indefinite strike from Monday if the government failed to consider their demands.
C. Rajamani, district secretary of the association, said that key demands were the scrapping of the new pension scheme and bringing back the old pension scheme, ensuring basic amenities and internet facilities in all offices of VAOs, making undergraduate degree as the minimum qualification for VAO posts, and providing allowance to those VAOs who are asked to take care of additional villages.
“Though VAOs can now provide online approvals for 25 types of certificates sought by the public, we do not have proper internet connection and have to rely on computers in other offices or private centres,” he said. Similarly, he added that vast majority of offices of the VAOs lacked basic amenities like drinking water and toilets.
Pointing out that VAOs were earlier provided allowance if they were asked to look after more than one village as additional charge, the association said that this allowance is now denied to them.
Other demands of the association included making VAOs approval mandatory for changes in the sub-division of pattas. “Earlier, our approval was mandatory. Now, approval by Surveyor is considered sufficient. This has led to lot of issues like sub-divisions being changed without adequate enquiries,” Mr. Rajamani said.