TIRUPATI: Nearly 4,000 outsourced and contract employees of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams working under different societies and agencies are gearing up to get into an agitation mode as the top brass of the temple administration is bent upon merging all the societies and agencies into one centralized outsourcing corporation.
There are about 73 societies and 11 agencies under which several outsourced and contract workers including temple priests, potu workers (temple kitchen staff), paricharaka, Purohita sangham, Kalyanakatta and those working with emergency services departments, have all completed more than 10-15 years in service with a hope that they will all be regularized at some point of time.
But their hopes have now been dashed with the TTD administration firm on establishing a separate wing on similar lines of the Andhra Pradesh corporation for outsourced services (APCOS), and has already initiated the process of registering a dedicated outsourcing corporation for the TTD.
The TTD think-tank has also served a diktat to the heads of the departments not to extend the contract of persons engaged on individual contract agreement, outsourcing through society/agency etc. henceforth.
Speaking to TOI on the imbroglio, TTD employees welfare association honorary president M Nagarjuna faulted the temple body for unilaterally going ahead with the merger of societies and agencies into the centralized outsourcing corporation without the consent of the outsourced and contract employees.
Outsourced and contract workers of the TTD had great hopes of being regularized as YS Jaganmohan Reddy in the run-up to the 2019 general elections promised them to initiate steps to absorb them as regular employees of the temple body once he assumed Chief ministership and took over the reins of the state.
"Both the Chief minister and the previous TTD trust board promised to regularize the services of all outsourced and contract employees. But now the temple administration is taking steps to suspend agreements with existing societies and agencies and contemplating to merge them into one centralized outsourcing corporation though all the 73 societies and 11 agencies have expressed their resentment over the move. We will get into an agitation mode if the administration does not recall its decision", claimed M Nagarjuna.
Meanwhile, potu workers who did not want themselves to be identified rued that many of them who sweat it out to dish out mouth watering Tirupati laddus have completed 15 years in service only with a hope that their services will be regularized at some point of time.
"It is because of our hardwork and commitment that today both the small laddus and the big Kalyanotsavam laddus are available freely to the devotees as we have scaled up production by working hard and overtime. Officers and successive trust boards only exploited us by promising to get our services regularized until now. And now we are being pressured to join the centralized outsourcing corporation but our society has said a firm no to the proposals", lamented another potu worker
