A 72-hour pen-down agitation by village and ward Secretariat staff began at all MPDO offices in Anantapur district on Monday morning with the staff members sitting on a dharna holding placards.
At Bukkarayasamudram, Rapthadu, Obuldevaracheruvu, Rayadurg and other mandals, the Secretariat staff wore black badges and raised slogans against the State government for neglecting their service conditions and not implementing a pay-scale as promised at the time of appointment.
“A majority of us have completed two years of probation period getting only ₹15,000 per month. As per our service conditions, we are supposed to get a pay scale of ₹16,400 from October 2021, but the government at the time of announcing the Pay Revision Commission (PRC) for other employees, extended our probation period by six months and now want to implement PRC from July 1 instead of January 1, 2022, like other employees,” said the agitating employees.
As per the PRC, the new scale for the junior assistants with two notional increments and four DA installments should be implemented, they demanded. The new pay scale for a junior assistant works out to ₹25,940 per month.
The district Collector had warned the Secretariat employees through the MPDOs and Panchayat Secretaries not to resort to agitation and continue the vaccination and OTS scheme implementation but many of the employees staged protests till afternoon.