The AP Cabinet has decided to constitute a cabinet sub-committee to decide the fate of indiscriminate outsourcing employees appointed by previous YS Jaganmohan Reddy’s regime in the name of APCOS. Such employees are still continuing in the government and it has become difficult for various government departments to pay salaries for them.
This decision was taken at the cabinet meeting held under the chairmanship of CM Chandrababu Naidu. The ministers said that during the YSRCP regime, outsourcing employees were recruited indiscriminately and a large number of employees were hired even in places where there was no need.
The CM suggested that the issue of whether there is a need for this level of outsourcing should be focused on. He said that since TTD has income, it is able to pay salaries to so many outsourcing employees. But he commented that such a situation does not exist in government departments. There are about 4,000 outsourcing employees in the TTD.
With this, it was decided to form a cabinet sub-committee to study whether APCO should be continued or purged or to study the effective use of outsourced employees. There was also a discussion on the Rushikonda buildings. The CM asked the ministers to visit it once before giving some suggestions.
The CM made it clear that in order to know the public opinion, IAS officers along with public representatives need to go to the field level. He said that there will be about 2,000 IAS officers and district level officers across the state, and if they go to the field level, they will be able to get better information about the functioning of the government.
He also said that it will give them an opportunity to prepare a route map by focusing on the problems at the village level. He said that each officer should choose a village and spend three days and two nights there with the villagers. He suggested that a good name be given to this program along the lines of Swarna Gram, Palle Nidra, Palle Velugu.
The Cabinet has decided to provide all possible assistance to the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, including an electricity subsidy of Rs. 2,400 crore. The Cabinet is of the opinion that this will provide relief from the burden of electricity charges for two years. Currently, the plant is bearing the burden of electricity bills of up to Rs. 100 crore per month.