Southern States - Andhra Pradesh

DA increase for Govt. staff

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD MAY 15. The dearness allowance of Government employees has been enhanced by 3.272 per cent, an ex- gratia of Rs 50,000 each sanctioned to families of 373 persons who died due to sunstroke last week and grant of Rs. 20 sanctioned to village administrative officers by the State Government.

The Chief Minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, said the revised DA and grant would be effective from January 1 and would cost Rs. 200.52 crores every year. The revised DA will be paid from May and the arrears from January to April credited to the employees' GPF accounts.

Mr. Chandrababu Naidu disclosed that 373 persons had died of sunstroke during the recent heat wave when temperatures shot up to 49 degrees C in Vijayawada. Guntur recorded the highest number of 84 deaths followed by Prakasam 63, East Godavari 50, West Godavari 44, Krishna 42, Khammam 29, Vizag 19, Mahabubnagar and Nellore 12 each, Nalgonda 7, Adilabad 6, Vizianagaram 2, while one person each died in Chittoor, Cuddapah and Karimnagar.

Mr. Naidu also announced launching of the World Bank-assisted A. P. Rural Poverty Reduction Project in 500 most backward rural mandals across 16 districts on June 1. This followed the Cabinet's approval for the Rs. 2,450-crore project, which seeks to bring poverty in the State to zero level in tune with the TDP's election manifesto to uplift 40 lakh BPL families.

A major component of this project is to build 64 residential schools at a cost of Rs. 4.5 crores each exclusively for girl children from BPL families in the 5-14 age group in a bid to empower them. Six districts were earlier covered under the first phase of the poverty eradication mission at a cost of Rs. 594 crores.

Mr. Naidu said the State had shown good results with the overall poverty rate coming down from 22.19 per cent in 1993-94 to 15.77 per cent in 1999-2000 against the corresponding figures of 35.97 and 26.10 per cent at the national level.

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