'Surveyors' strike has not affected services'

The Revenue Department has been using the services of 2,000 surveyors to prepare pre-mutation sketches.

As many as 3,200 licensed surveyors are on strike since December 29, 2009 raising many demands including direct absorption of their services to the department and upward revision of their payments. Evenafter, Revenue Minister Karunakara Reddy held talks with protesters, the matter remained unresolved.

 Addressing a press conference in Bangalore on Tuesday Rajeev Chawla said that there has been no increase in the number of pending  applications since the surveyors went on strike. Since the day the strike began the total number of pending applications for pre-mutation sketches was 29,932. As on January 18, the department had cleared 4,833 applications, preparation of 14,561 sketches was at various levels and the total pendency was 25,968.
“We have experienced surveyors in the department, who were earlier assigned to other jobs in the department. Now they are assigned to work on pre-mutation sketches. These surveyors will be on duty as long as the strike continues,” said Chawla. Recruiting all the licensed surveyors as employees of the department was impossible as it would lead to violation of the Cadre and Recruitment Rules, he said.