Kyathanpalli municipal officials make junior assistants fill clay in covers: VROs
The VROs regretted that they were forced to become daily wage earners at the municipality.
Mancherial: Officials of Kyathanpalli municipality are drawing flak for making employees, who were once village revenue officers (VRO), fill plastic covers with clay as part of Telanganaku Haritha Haram programme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
Seventeen VROs were posted as junior officers and ward officers at the municipality as per instructions of the Collector in 2022. They carry experience of between six and 20 years in discharging around 56 services including emergency ones when they were part of the revenue system. However, for the last few days, they have been given the work of filling up clay at a nursery of the civic body.
“Engaging the VROs in this kind of work has exposed the inhuman side of officials of the civic body. It is also abusing human resources and insulting an employee’s prestige. It is deplorable,” State president of VROs association Garike Upendra Rao said. He demanded that the government take back the VROs in the Revenue department.
The VROs regretted that they were forced to become daily wage earners at the municipality. They requested officials to take steps to ensure that they get suitable jobs rather than filling clay in plastic covers. They lamented that they were shocked to do the job after serving for quite a long time.
“Our situation is nothing short of beggars. We cannot disclose the nature of our jobs to our family members. We feel ashamed and humiliated to have been engaged in this work. We are left with no option but to continue in this post after abolishing the VRO system,” a VRO lamented.
When asked, Kyathanpalli municipal commissioner Muralikrishna said that not only junior assistants, but also other staffers of the civic body were also involved in the job. He said they were not showing discrimination against the junior assistants. He added that the assistants were excluded if they raised objections to the task.
The officials of the civic body said the junior assistants intentionally shot photographs and videos at the time of filling up of the clay. The aim of the assistants was to go back to the revenue department. They were not interested in working with the departments that they were allotted. They were converting it into a controversy, an official said.
