YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy is understood to have decided to increase the honorarium of village volunteers by 60 per cent – from Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000 per month.
A decision to this effect is likely to be taken after a meeting of the chief minister with general secretary of the state village volunteers’ association at Tadepalli on Monday.
The village volunteers at the village level and ward volunteers at the municipality level have been operating since August 15 to take the delivery of government schemes to the doorsteps of the common man.
After the establishment of village/war secretariats from October 2, the functioning of village volunteers has become more hectic.
Each volunteer has been allotted 50 households and their duty is to ensure that all the benefits, like pensions, YSR Bharosa amount and essential commodities are delivered to the doorsteps of the common man.
However, right from the beginning, there has been criticism by the opposition about the honorarium offered to village volunteers – Rs 5,000 per month each.
Even at several places, there were reports of village volunteers expressing disgruntlement over the paltry sum.
This has led to corruption at the grassroots level, each on a small scale. More recently, there were reports of village volunteers collecting “mamools” from the beneficiaries for providing pensions and other benefits of government schemes.
The vigilance team of the government caught some village volunteers red-handed while collecting bribes and suspended them.
Obviously taking serious note of this, Jagan has felt that if corruption is not nipped in the bud, it will fetch a bad name to the government, as was the case with the previous TDP regime which got into soup with corruption of Janma Bhoomi committees.
He, apparently felt that there is a hike in honorarium of village volunteers, the corruption at the grassroots level will come down to a large extent.
That is the reason why Jagan has decided to increase the honorarium from Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000, sources said.