Excelsior Correspondent
UDHAMPUR, July 2: Water Works (PHE) Employees Association Udhampur held a meeting of executive bodies of both the districts of Udhampur and Reasi at PHE Complex here under the chairmanship of Som Nath, senior vice president of the Association for Jammu province.
The meeting in one voice strongly criticized the attitude of the State Government towards workers who have not been paid their wages for the past 34 months whereas salaries of MLAs and MLCs have been increased to Rs 1.60 lakh per month and pension of Rs 50,000 per month. It was held that for poor workers, nothing has been kept in the budget session which was held only to double the salary of legislatures.
The meeting took exception to the silence maintained by all the MLAs and MLCs during the past 20 years to frame a policy of their regularization and requested the Government to consider the demands of the workers.
Mr Som Nath in his address appealed all the employees and workers of Jammu province to remain united so that various long pending demands could be got fulfilled.
The other demands voiced in the meeting included Release of wages which are pending for the past over 32 months; Implementation of Minimum Wages Act; Immediate regularization of workers; Revision of sanctioned strength of the department, as there was no revision of sanctioned strength of field functionaries of the department for the past 40 years; Meeting shortage of staff to effectively man the on-going water supply schemes; Change of designation as per nature of job being performed by the workers; Payment to those engaged in lieu of land donation; Release of 6% DA installment to employees and workers from July 2015; and Enhancement in daily wage rate to Rs 150 to Rs 400.
It was also demanded for putting an end to the discrimination being meted out to the employees of Jammu province by way of very less emoluments to them as compared to their counterparts in Kashmir valley. The meeting resolved that since the Central Government has released 7th Pay Commission recommendations for its employees the State Government should also release the same in favour of State Government employees without any alteration in it.
Others who spoke on the occasion included Vijay Kumar, Rattan Singh, Suraj Parkash, Baldev Raj, Krishan Chand, Shiv Lal, Dinesh Kessar, Sanjay Sharma, Makhan Chand, Rajinder Kumar, Ved Parkash, Chunni Lal, Shambu Dutt, Karan Singh, Mohinder Pail etc.
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