Hyderabad: Peeved over the reluctance of government employees of the state working in Hyderabad not willing to relocate to Vijayawada and Guntur, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has took the job on his own shoulders to convince them.
After a gap of three months, the chief minister who had announced that he would not come to the state secretariat in Hyderabad has scheduled a meeting with Heads of all government departments in the state secretariat on November 28, to hammer out a solution to the nagging issue of shifting between the government and employees.
The chief minister’s meeting has come following the government’s efforts in last two months to convince the employees to shift from Hyderabad to Vijayawada has yielded no results. Initially, the employees were asked to give in writing whoever wanted to move from Hyderabad to Vijayawada. This voluntary scheme has remained a non-starter as there were not many takers to it. Contrary to the government’s move the employees had raised the question of Local Status. Because, children of the employees have been studying in Hyderabad, and if they shift to Vijayawada they will not be treated as local candidates, either in Telangana, or in Andhra Pradesh. This is the stipulation mandated as per Article 371 of the presidential order, on the local status that is in force. So, they asked the government first to talk to centre and ensure that their children would get local status on shifting to Vijayawada. Considering the genuine issue, the state cabinet had passed a resolution asking the Union Home Ministry, to amend the clauses in the Presidential Order. This is to grant local status to those shifted or going to shift from Telangana to Andhra Pradesh, between the dates on which the state has been bifurcated till January 2017. However, the Union Home Ministry has asked in turn the state government to send a draft amendment it wanted. Hence, this issue could not be resolved making the employees not willing to shift until the issue is resolved.
Again, the employees wanted the government to provide accommodation to them and identify the office space that they will have to work. This has turned out to be a herculean task to the government. So for, the government could only identify a space to shift its secretariat on temporary basis to Medha Towers, on the outskirts of Vijayawada, which is a declared Special Economic Zone. But, it is yet to identify spaces in Vijayawada, to shift several state level offices like directorates and commissionrates that are functioning from Hyderabad.
While budgetary constraints were reportedly one problem being faced by the government, on the other, it is finding it difficult to provide accommodation to about 12,000 to 15,000 employees housing facility. The employees’ demands has come following sudden hike in rental values in Vijayawada and Guntur, and surrounding areas.
While this is so, taking serious view of the reluctance of the employees, the General Administration Department had issued a circular giving three deadlines for its employees for shifting from Hyderabad to Vijayawada. The first phase of shifting should be completed by the end of November, the second phase by the end of February, 2016 and the third and last phase for shifting was fixed as June 1, 2016.
But, the employees in turn had given their willingness to shift by June 1, provided if they were shown accommodation to stay, and office space to work from. This has brought the whole issue of shifting once again to square one. Tough there were several rounds of talks were held between the leaders of employees associations and the senior officials , and the Chief Secretary I Y R Krishna Rao, no visible results have come out from these efforts.
It was against this scenario; the chief minister himself has decided to handle the issue and called for a meeting of all the heads of the departments to discuss on the shifting of employees from Hyderabad to Vijayawada. He is likely to meet the representatives of several employees associations to find out a solution to the issue.
