Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday appealed to the High Court to approve the government’s policy on giving benefits to contract workers on par with regular employees.
He said the government was not taking up regularisation of contract employees as claimed by some.
Mr Rao clarified that the government was only ‘absorbing’ those employees into departments to save them from exploitation of contract agencies, who are looting them in the name of contract jobs.
“We have decided to extend benefits to over 20,000 contract employees working in the power department. But some people filed cases in High Court against regularisation of their services. We are not regularising them. They are not our employees. They were supplied by some contract agencies to the government and have been working for years for meagre salaries,” he said.
The CM said that these contract employees risk their lives by taking up risky jobs like climbing poles to take up repairs and ensure proper power supply for all of us. “The government is paying their salaries to the contract agencies, which in turn impose salary cuts of '1,000 or '3,000 as commission and loot them. We want to eliminate this contract system and pay salaries directly for them on par with regular employees. But some vested interests are not digesting even this and filing cases in courts,” Mr Rao said.
The CM said the government will extend the same benefit to all the contract employees working in other departments.
“If regularisation is not possible as per Supreme Court orders, we will ensure that they get salaries on par with regular staff besides job security. We will not go back on this,” Mr Rao said.
