AIADMK general secretary Edappadi K Palaniswami on Thursday urged the Tamil Nadu government to release two months of pending salaries to more than 4,400 contract employees working under the Vazhndhu Kattuvom rural transformation scheme and provide them job security.
In a statement, Palaniswami said the workforce includes more than 500 supervisory officers and around 3,900 field staff working at the state, district and block levels. He claimed many employees have worked on consolidated pay for 10 to 18 years and now face uncertainty over their employment.
According to Palaniswami, the employees are involved in organising farmers and forming Farmer Producer Organisations, providing training and seed-capital support, assisting vulnerable groups, facilitating e-Seva centres and promoting rural entrepreneurship through micro-credit programmes. He also said their work benefited more than 6.5 lakh people across rural Tamil Nadu.
Palaniswami said the project, initially launched as the Rural Transformation Project, was renamed Vazhndhu Kattuvom by the DMK government in 2021. He said the government announced the expansion of the programme into Phase 2, or Part 3.0, through an order issued on February 13, 2026.
However, he alleged that salaries have remained unpaid for two months and that state-level staff were relieved from service from September 23.
He urged the government to either retain the workers under Vazhndhu Kattuvom 3.0 without interruption or absorb them into Magalir Thittam, while immediately clearing their salary arrears.