Southern States
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Andhra Pradesh
Village servants threaten to launch Statewide stir
By Our Special Correspondent
HYDERABAD, DEC. 6. Gram sevaks or village servants, who are demanding a share in the posts of secretary available under the present village level administrative reforms, threatened to launch a Statewide agitation if no response comes from the Government.
Leaders of the Andhra Pradesh Grama Sevakula Sangham, their representative organisation, met the press here on Thursday led by the CPI(M) legislator, Mr S. Rajaiah, to state that those having educational qualification beyond class X among them should be taken in as secretaries for the village secretariats planned under the reforms. They said, though there were 22,000 revenue villages in the State, the village servants working for them numbered nearly 55,000 with major villages having two to 10 sevaks. Among them, about 10,000 were educated with some also being post-graduates.
When this was the situation, it was objectionable and uncharitable to offer the posts only to village administrative officers (VAOs) and panchayat workers, said Messrs D. Rajalingam, Mr N. Lakshminarayana, both general secretaries of the sangham, Mr M. Anjaiah and Mr G. Ramulu, vice-president and honorary advisor, respectively.
It may be noted here that village servants are the bottom level workers mostly belonging to SC/ST sections doing a variety of works, some of them even menial, under VAOs. They are called "vettis" or "motadu" in Coastal area and "kavali", "talari", "sethisindh" or "mascoori" in Telangana. The families have been in the work for the past 40-50 years based on hereditary lines.
The Sangham leaders said that while there were 22,000 secretary posts, 13,000 could be filled at the most with the available VAOs and panchayat workers having required qualifications. As such, these 9,000 posts required the candidates from outside. At least a fraction of these could be filled with village servants, they pleaded.
They said the Rs 1,000 monthly payment being given to them was not sufficient in these days of inflation and wanted the Government to implement the minimum at Rs 1,960 as promised by it earlier. Similarly, their DA should be increased to Rs 50. Mr Rajalingam demanded implementation of all GOs issued so far for them which would have provided them with house-sites, access to banjar lands and cycle loans. The GOs also would have ended their "drudgery" or "bonded labour" at the private residences of the revenue officials under whom they were working.
Mr Rajaiah and Mr Rajalingam demanded regularisation of the services of the village servants and threatened that they would launch an agitation if the Government did not give any reponse before the next Assembly session. They would chalk out an action plan at a meeting to be held in Hyderabad on December 13.
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