Sanitation workers salaries not released for the past four months: laments BJP’s Gudur 

Hyderabad, March 25: Bharatiya Janata Party state senior leader Gudur Narayana Reddy on Saturday demanded the state government to take steps for immediate release of  sanitation workers salaries of Gram Panchayats.
In a media statement, he said that salaries of the sanitation workers were not released for the past four months. Even though the workers have been staging protests to release their salaries, there was no response from the government. 
He said that a Dalit sanitary worker committed suicide recently as he did not get the salary for the past four months. Most of the families of sanitation workers are on the verge of ruin, he said. 
He said that most of the Panchayats get meager revenues through the property tax which was not enough to meet the monthly expenditure. They are mostly dependent on Central Finance Commission funds and matching grants of the state government. 
The BJP leader said that Gram Panchayats were unable to pay the salaries of the sanitation workers as they did not have any funds left with them. The state government diverted the funds being given to the GPs by the Centre through the Finance Commission.
He made it clear that the state government was solely responsible for the nonpayment of salaries to the sanitation workers for the past four months. He criticized that the governance has gone haywire in the state. 
He pointed out that the Centre has released Rs 3,500 crores to the Zilla Parishads, Mandal Parishads and Gram Panchayats of Telangana in December last year. The state government was supposed to distribute the funds among the local bodies according to the officially fixed ratios. 
“However the state government diverted these funds to its treasury and did not release them to the rural local bodies. This has led to funds crisis in the GPs. The sarpanches have taken up development works spending lakhs of rupees from their own pockets. But the government has not been paying the bills for months together,” Narayana Reddy said. 
The BJP leader said that the sarpanches have planned to meet the expenditure on development works and the salary bills through the FC funds. But the funds diversion has become a wet blanket for them. 
He said that state government was not at all concerned about the well being of the sanitation workers of GPs even though it claims that it was all for them. Any further delay in paying the salaries would lead to deaths in the families of the sanitation workers, he warned. 
He criticized that the Pananchayat Raj minister was much concerned about praising and defending the Chief Minister and his family members than taking care of his department. 
Narayana Reddy said that the BRS which was neck deep in scams, one after other, was quite busy in saving its skin than running the state in proper manner. 
He said that in view of surge in the Covid cases and flu cases in the state it is imperative to keep up the sanitation in the villages and towns on a war footing. Any negligence would have a catastrophic effect on the people of the state.