KCR May Announce Full Salary For Govt Employees For May Month

HYDERABAD: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao is set to announce some key decisions as the state is inching towards May 31st, the last day of the extended coronavirus lockdown. The Telangana chief minister presided over a high-level review meeting at Pragathi  Bhavan here on Wednesday.

There was speculation that KCR has in principle agreed for paying all government employees in the state a full salary for the month of May. Also, in the wake of the Telangana High Court ruling, the state government was contemplating to pay full pension without any cuts. The state government is likely to ideally wait for the Centre to issue its fresh guidelines before firming up its decisions in this regard.

Soon after lockdown was imposed on March 24th, the Telangana chief minister announced steep wage cuts for state government employees to cope up with the fast-drying up revenue due to the shutdown.

But as against the popular expectations, the Telangana government is not expected to toe the line of some states on the issue of allowing places of worship to open their door so soon. Karnataka leads the states that have announced re-opening of places of worship – temples, mosques, churches besides religious entities from June 1st. The Telangana government appears to be in favour of treading a cautious line in this connection as it fears a bigger risk of a sudden spurt in the number of the COVID-19 cases.

The chief minister was also said to have extensively discussed the issue of resumption of metro rail services and city bus services in the state capital Hyderabad. However, the likelihood of letting these services to restart appears very bleak as maximum cases of the state are being reported from within the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation limits. Similarly, no permission is likely to be granted for schools and other educational institutions, cinema theatres, shopping malls and complexes and sports stadia or complexes to re-open and resume their activities.

The state government is all likely to continue the status quo with regard to the lockdown restrictions in these sectors.