Andhra Pradesh: Pandemic hits outsourced govt employees hard

AMARAVATI: About two lakh employees working in different government departments on outsourcing basis are left to struggle as the government is not extending any financial assistance even to those tested positive for Covid-19.
The government is granting them loss of pay leave when tested positive for Covid-19.
Heads of the departments (HoDs) have asked the district unit managers not to allow the employees to attend duties for 14 days even if their family members tested positive.Such instructions would help the regular employees to tide over the crisis since they would be getting their salary as usual in addition to the medical benefits under employees’ health insurance scheme. However, the departmental chiefs have ignored grievances of outsourcing employees.
According to Outsourced and Contract Employees’ Union leader E Madhubabu, about 60 outsourced employees in different departments died due to Covid-19 in the last two months. “The families of outsourced employees who lost their breadwinners are virtually on the streets as they were not getting any financial assistance either ex-gratia or medical benefits,” said Madhubabu.
He demanded that the government should extend the health insurance scheme and ex-gratia benefits to the outsourced employees as they were handling more work than the regular employees. He said that at least 10 to 15 employees were turning positive to Covid-19 every day as they were the most exposed to the virus in the system.
Regular employees by virtue of their seniority are making outsourced employees scapegoats by assigning them field work leaving them to work under stress. “Facing pay cut during the leave period after testing positive is very painful when we are unable to manage the medical costs,” said K Nageswara Rao, an outsourced data entry operator in the health department. He urged the chief minister to consider granting full pay when someone availed leave after getting tested positive. AP Corporation for Outsourced Services (APCOS) managing director Sanjay Prabhakar had died of Covid-19 last week. The state government appointed additional director Vasudeva Rao as managing director of APCOS following the sudden death of Sanjay Prabhakar.
Although APCOS is managing the services of the outsourced employees, it is just implementing the policies of different departments which are hiring the staff on outsourcing basis.
“The decision to grant full salary and medical benefits to the outsourced employees should be taken by the respective departments,” said a senior official of APCOS.