THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Finance minister T M Thomas Isaac said that nobody will be subjected to discrimination in the name of not giving one-month salary to the Chief Minister’s disaster relief fund and that nobody should be afraid to decide that they will not donate money to the fund. He was responding to the Kerala Kaumudi news which revealed how the family budgets of officers are getting affected by the salary challenge.  

“Many people in Kerala has not obtained an income in the last month. Construction workers, businessmen, agricultural workers and small scale farmers require a lot more time to recover from the disaster due to floods. However, the situation of government officials is not like that. They have a fixed monthly salary. That is why the Chief Minister requested to donate their one-month salary”, said Isaac.

“Though everyone has the decision to say yes or no to salary challenge, conducting conventions and meetings against this cannot be appreciated. UDF government had decided not to avail benefits including leave surrender in a similar situation in 2002”, he said.