Telangana: 400 staffers at water quality monitoring labs of Mission Bhagiratha wait for salaries

Officials said the salaries were delayed due to the fund crunch the State government was facing

Mancherial: Nearly 400 staffers working with the water quality monitoring and analysis laboratories of the Mission Bhagiratha programme across the State have been waiting for their salaries for the last nine months. They play a vital role in analysing and examining the quality of drinking water supplied to the public by the State.

As many as 375 staffers including chemists, microbiologists, field assistants and lab attendants are associated with 75 laboratories in 31 districts on contract-basis. Their job is to analyse and examine water drawn from different drinking water sources such as taps, borewells and open wells and to upload reports on the website of Jal Jeevan Mission. They are paid salaries ranging from Rs 15,000 to Rs 22,500 per month.

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“We were paid salaries of three months till July 2024 at once in August. We have been waiting for salaries since then. We are struggling to run our families without salaries. We are taking loans from friends and relatives to meet various expenditures. It is hard to live without receiving salaries for such a long time,” a staffer from a laboratory in Kumram Bheem Asifabad district, said.

Some of the staffers who have been working for 25 years are drawing meagre wages. They have continued to be associated with the Rural Water Scheme government hoping their jobs would be regularised.

The staffers were part of the Rural Water Scheme (RWS) until a few years back. Their salaries were being jointly shared by both the State and Centre. They were included in the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) wing when the then government introduced the Mission Bhagiratha programme in 2014. They were receiving salaries on time till a few months back.

Mission Bhagiratha officials said the salaries were delayed due to the fund crunch the State government was facing. Bills for the salaries were submitted to higher officials, they said, adding steps would be taken to pay the salaries to the staffers at the earliest.