YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has promised to set up secretariats at the ward and village levels to ensure that the benefits of government welfare schemes reach the beneficiaries directly.
Addressing a public meeting at Gajuwaka on Sunday, Mr. Reddy said that a small team of educated unemployed youth designated as ‘volunteers’ would be posted at these secretariats and they would be assigned 50 households each. They would work in coordination with the local secretariat for disbursement of benefits of welfare schemes such as Arogyasri and fee re-imbursement.
“A beneficiary needs to apply to the secretariat and the rest will be taken care of by the volunteers. The beneficiary need not run around the secretariat or pay a bribe for clearance of his file,” Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy said and alleged that the Janmabhoomi committees were demanding bribes from the beneficiaries and acting as to their whims and fancies.
Alleging that Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had failed to fulfil his promise on jobs, the YSRCP chief pointed out that as per the Kamalanathan Commission, there were 1.42 lakh vacant posts in various government departments in the State at the time of bifurcation and an additional 90,000 employees were estimated to have retired in the last five years.
DWCRA loans
Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy further promised that 2 lakh odd vacant posts would be filled, if he was voted to power, adding that the DWCRA loans would be waived off.
He said that Mr. Naidu had promised to provide a monthly unemployment allowance ₹ 2,000, but it was granted only just last three months ago.
Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy appealed to the people to ensure the victory of YSRCP in all the 25 MP seats in the State to achieve the Special Category Status (SCS).
Special Category Status
“Mr. Naidu had cheated the people of the State by taking a U-turn on the SCS. The SCS will bring a lot of investments, industries and hotels, generating employment opportunities. The poll battle in the State is as a fight between justice and injustice,” he said.
Claiming that Visakhapatnam had developed a lot on the industrial front during the YSR regime, he said that IT jobs which were 16,000 then had now come down to around 12,000. He also introduced the party nominee for Gajuwaka Assembly constituency Tippala Nagi Reddy and Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha constituency candidate M.V.V. Satyanarayana to the gathering.