Telangana staff organise community lunch

HYDERABAD: The Secretariat Telangana employees JAC, which is on strike in support of the ongoing Sakala Janula Samme, had organised a ‘community lunch’ for all Secretariat employees belonging to all three regions of the state, in the Secretariat premises on Friday.The lunch was organised with an intention to express solidarity amongst all employees of the Secretariat and to maintain ‘peace, harmony and cooperation’ irrespective of whether the state gets divided or not.Chief secretary Pankaj Dwivedi, senior IAS officers and Secretariat employees of other states had also attended the community lunch.Interestingly, Telangana employees JAC leaders K Swamy Goud, G Devi Prasada Rao, C Vittal and V Srinivas Goud had also attended the lunch. Later, Pankaj Dwivedi appreciated the employees’ gesture and wanted them to be united.Speaking to the media, Telangana Secretariat employees’ JAC chairman Narender Rao cited incidents of how the state’s division would affect personal relations amongst employees working in other government offices in the region and said that the community lunch has been arranged as an effort to minimize apprehensions, if any, amongst their colleagues belonging to Seemandhra region.“We (Telangana JAC) want to ensure that developments that take place outside the Secretariat due to the ongoing Telangana agitation should not affect personal relations of the Secretariat employees,” he added.Majority of the Seemandhra employees, including officers, had attended the community lunch.The Secretariat Telangana employees JAC had arranged food for about 3,000 employees. About 20 per cent of the total 3,500 permanent Secretariat staff belong to the Telangana region.