Chennai: Government employees and teachers have objected to AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami cautioning them about believing Chief Minister M K Stalin’s promises and telling them that would take them for a ride without implementing anything that he might assure.
The employees and teachers said Palaniswami, who did nothing for them during his tenure as Chief Minister, was not shedding crocodile tears for them. They said that Palaniswami had humiliated them by mentioning a teachers’ salary and wondering aloud if a teacher deserved that much amount in one occasion when he was Chief Minister.
Whenever the AIADMK government filed cases against government employees and teachers for going on strikes, it was the DMK that cancelled those charges after coming to power, besides setting up several pay commissions to revise their salaries over the years and to bring them on par with Union Government employees, they said in a statement on Monday.
The statement also gave a list of measures taken by the DMK governments since 1968, including four pay commissions in 19 years, for providing better compensation to teachers and government staff and various concessions given to them after the DMK government under M K Stalin came to power.
Increasing maternity leave for teachers and government staff from nine months to 12 months and raising women’s reservation in government services to 40 per cent from 30 per cent were among the measures of the DMK government that were highlighted in the statement.
They also recalled the AIADMK government dismissing 1.73 lakh government employees and teachers in one stroke when the houses of striking employees, including women, were raided by the police and they were forced to fight a prolonged legal battle.
