Senior bureaucrat Praveen Prakash, presently serving as the Principal Secretary to Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, shot off a letter this week, where he claimed that he will not withdraw his own salary until Class 3 and Class 4 employees are paid.
In a letter to Chiday Rama Rao, Drawing and Disbursing Officer and Assistant Secretary (Claims) under the General Administration Department (GAD), he said, "You may agree with me that the real arms of the government are the Class-3 and Class-4 employees. It is the Class-3 and 4 employees who translate the vision of Government at the field level."
"Incidentally, most of Class-3 & 4 employees are hired through Contract or through Outsourcing method. It has been observed that the payment of salary of these contract outsourced employees is delayed substantially," he added.
Noting that there were many reasons for this, like delay in preparation of attendance sheets, delay in preparation of bills, delay in approval of bills and delay in passing the bills, he noted that the Class 3 and 4 employees were only getting their salaries in the second or third week of the month or even later.
"The basic human needs are very similar and the general level of savings of Class 3 and 4 employees are lesser than that of Class 1 and 2 employees. So, the necessity to pay Class 3 and 4 employees in the first week of the month is higher than Class 1 and 2 officers who can afford some delay in payment of salary," Praveen wrote.
"It is the responsibility of Senior IAS officers like me to monitor and ensure that all the processes related to the release of salaries to contract employees are done on time. To ensure that this does not go out of my sight, I hereby request you to not credit my salary starting December 1, 2019, until all contract and outsourced employees of the GAD (Political) are paid," he added.
Praveen was recently in the news after he received a show-cause notice from former Chief Secretary LV Subrahmanyam.
Subrahmanyam had alleged that Praveen Prakash had exhibited ‘grave misconduct’ and ‘misbehaviour’ and resorted to ‘willful insubordination’ and sought an explanation on ‘violation of business rules and conduct rules.'
Days later, Praveen issued orders transferring Subrahmanyam and posted him as Director-General of the AP Human Resources Development Institute in Bapatla, triggering a major row.