Vijayawada: State govt has decided to rationalise staff members in village and ward secretariats to improve service delivery to the public. Chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has instructed officials to appoint one ward/village secretary as ‘aspirational secretary’ to promote technological advancements for rural and urban development.
He emphasised creating a roadmap that ensures equal workload distribution among staff, shifting from hard work to smart work.
Currently, around 1.27 lakh regular employees work across approximately 15,000 village and ward secretariats, which have been operational for the past five years. These include 11,162 secretariats in rural areas and nearly 3,800 in urban areas, all aimed at bringing govt services to the people’s doorsteps. Each secretariat serves a population of 2,000 in villages and 4,000 in urban areas. The govt has now decided to adjust this ratio to an average of 2,500 people per secretariat. As part of the rationalisation plan, each secretariat will have eight staff members, with personnel being reassigned to different centers as needed. Staff will be divided into two categories: multipurpose functionaries and technical functionaries.
In village secretariats, the panchayat secretary, digital assistant, welfare secretary, and women welfare secretary will be classified as multipurpose functionaries. In urban ward secretariats, administrative, welfare, data processing, and women welfare secretaries will fall under this category.
Technical functionaries will include roles like village revenue secretaries, ANM, engineering assistants, survey assistants, and sector-specific secretaries such as agriculture, veterinary, horticulture, among others.
