HYDERABAD: In a piece of good news to Telangana government employees and pensioners, Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao on Tuesday directed the officials concerned to pay full salary to them for the month of June, payable in July, following a marginal increase in the state's income due to relaxations in lockdown restrictions.

The government has been paying only a part of the salaries to the employees and pensions to retired staff over the last three months due to the drastic fall in revenue in the state since the time the lockdown was imposed to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Incidentally, leaders of Telangana Employees' Joint Action Committee (JAC) have recently met Telangana Finance Minister Tanneeru Harish Rao and submitted a memorandum urging him to ensure full salaries for the government employees this month. The government appears to have taken into consideration the hardships of the financially-crippled government employees before eventually deciding to restore full pay for them for this month.

Telangana was among many states that had gone in for sharp pay cuts to deal with the financial crisis in the face of dwindling revenues during the lockdown time. Even the Centre had announced pay cuts for Central government employees of several sectors, promising to restore the salaries to the original level once the situation improves.

Telangana, like several states, however, exempted employees of key sectors like medical and health, police, and sanitation in view of the crucial role they had been playing as frontline warriors in combating COVID-19.