Panchayat secretaries struggle under heavy workload in Mancherial

The secretaries submitted a memorandum to the District Panchayat Officer and local MPDOs, seeking exemption from the duties, surveys, security and redressal of their challenges

Mancherial: Of late, panchayat secretaries in the district, known for discharging duties at the village level, are tackling a heavy workload, courtesy the frequent surveys for schemes and initiatives of the government.

The secretaries have become multi-taskers ever since the Congress formed the government in December. They are at the forefront of almost every activity of the State.

---

They are currently engaged in a survey meant for identifying genuine beneficiaries of the Indiramma housing scheme. They were given daily targets in this survey. This came just on the heels of the socio-economic caste survey held by the government recently.

Before that, they were tasked with conducting the elections to the Assembly and Parliament. They then received Praja Palana applications and carried out digitalization of the documents.

They were tasked with conducting surveys aimed at assessing the impact of Mission Bhagiratha and were also busy in addressing problems in the daily drinking water scheme, resulting in a never-before workload for them.

The panchayat secretaries said they were performing various tasks without availing holidays and risking their health for the last three to four months. They are experiencing mental and physical stress caused by the severe workload, they said, adding that some of them were diagnosed with health problems such as diabetes and hypertension.

The secretaries submitted a memorandum to the District Panchayat Officer and local MPDOs, seeking exemption from the duties, surveys, security and redressal of their challenges.

“We are actively taking part in every welfare and developmental programme of the government. We hope the officials will take steps to reduce the workload by understanding our situation,” a leader said.

Some of the demands of the secretaries included issuing of circulars instead of oral instructions given on WhatsApp and Zoom meeting applications in order to assign a task and engage them in survey apart from duties mentioned in their job chart, to exempt them from duties on holidays and festivals, to give time to process applications of Indiramma housing scheme and to reduce stress by slashing targets.

The demands also included handing over the task of identifying beneficiaries to village-level committees, to enable them to avail leaves consumed for emergency duties, to complete the process of promotions, to add two years of service to junior panchayat secretaries and to elevate outsourced secretaries to junior panchayat secretaries.

“At the same time, being involving in the identification of the beneficiaries is bringing us enemies, with ineligible beneficiaries nursing a grudge against us,” the panchayat secretaries regretted.