Despite serious warning from the government that not joining of duties by Saturday afternoon would cost them their jobs and they would no more will be government employees, the junior panchayat secretaries (JPS) and outsourcing panchayat secretaries (OPS) continued their agitation.
Bairi Soni, a JPS working at Rangapur village in Khanapur mandal of Warangal district, committed suicide by consuming pesticide at the office on Friday. She took this step one day after withdrawing from the agitation and joining the duty. Though it was alleged that she took the extreme step unable to digest the fear of losing her job, police asserted that she took this step due to family issues.
As many as 9,355 JPS and OPS are on strike for the past 16 days demanding regularisation of their jobs as promised by the government in the past. “We have completed three years of probation on April 11, 2022, but our services were not regularised. Instead the government has issued GO No. 26 and extended the probation by another year. Even after that also no steps were taken by the government to regularise our services. Hence, we have issued strike notice and have been on the agitation path,” Telangana Panchayat Secretaries Federation president A. Srikanth Goud told The Hindu.
A video is going viral in social media in which a person, reported to be father of late Bairi Soni, is being questioned by the police in which he says that Ms. Soni’s husband has suspected her and asked her to quit the job as it would not be regularised. In the video other employees are questioning him when he was giving the first statement whereas police are questioning him when he was giving the second statement. At one point he was seen folding his hands and asking them to leave him as his daughter was already dead.
According to Mr. Srikanth Goud some 1,400 JPS and OPS joined duty by Saturday evening.
