TN State Government offices to function on all Saturdays till year-end !
Posted on: 04/Sep/2020 12:37:05 PM
The State Government of Tamil Nadu has ordered that all the state government offices will function on all Saturdays until the year end. Lockdown conditions were imposed in the state of Tamil Nadu (and other states all over the country ( as a preventive measure against the spread of the raging coronavirus pandemic since 25th March.
With this lockdown, the state government offices could not function as usual. Especially during the entire month of April, all the state government offices remained closed.Only by the 3rd week of May, the state government offices resumed functioning with minimum employees.
Over the last few weeks, the various state government offices were functioning with 50% staff on a rotation basis. During this period, a duty chart was prepared for the employees so that each employee to attend duty on 4 days a week. Accordingly, the staff attended duty even on Saturdays.
In this scenario, the State Government of Tamil Nadu has now ordered that all employees must attend duty on all Saturdays from 1st September.Subsequently, all the State Government offices in Tamil Nadu has been functioning with full staff from 1st September, Tuesday. With 100% staff resuming duty, the earlier rotation duty system has been withdrawn. As such, the state government employees trusted that with the cancellation of rotation duty system, the need to function on Saturdays will come to a close.
However, the State Government of Tamil Nadu has ordered that all the offices will function on all Saturdays with a view that the state government offices remained closed for long periods earlier due to the corona virus pandemic and also to facilitate the completion of all the pending work thus far. Information is gathered that this will continue until the end of this year. The system of all state government employees attending duty on Saturdays was withdrawn by the AIADMK government in the year 1992. The Chief Minister at that time, Jayalalithaa defined the system of 5 working days per week and the daily work from 10.00 AM to 5.45 PM.
Due to the corona virus pandemic, certain temporary changes have been carried out in the above system. Till end December, all Saturdays will be working days. Information is gathered that the government offices will remain closed on the 2nd Saturday of every month for spraying disinfectants and cleaning the premises.
In case the state government offices function on Saturdays, the persons working in private sector industries can visit these offices without any hassle to carry out their requirements. Especially, getting certificates from the Revenue Offices, getting birth and death certificates, getting the family ration cards, etc., can be done on Saturdays.
The State Government employees have protested against this oral order. In this regard, the Chief Secretariat Association and other Association have appealed to the State Government regarding this. The Association officials are fairly confident that the State Government of Tamil Nadu will act soon on their appeals.
