Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 3: The MLAs of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and National Panthers Party (NPP) today staged walk-out over the inordinate delay in regularization of employees of the Public Health Engineering Department and release of their wages.
Raising the issue during the Zero Hour, NPP MLA from Udhampur, Balwant Singh Mankotia said PHE employees have been on chain hunger strike during the past 27 days seeking regularization of their services and clearance of 23 months backlog wages but the Government continued to act as a mute spectator.
As there was no response from the Government, all the BJP and NPP MLAs left their seats in protest and moved towards the front row of the House. However, Speaker, Mubarak Gul stated that regularization of the workers of PHE Department was taking time for want of verification as per the policy laid down in this regard by the Government.
The intervention of Speaker failed to bring an end to the protest from the BJP and NPP MLAs, who said that grave injustice was being meted out to the employees and workers. On the directions of the Speaker, Minister of State for PHE, Nazir Ahmed Gurezi also tried to explain the reasons behind delay in regularization process but he too failed to convince the agitating MLAs to return to their seats.
After holding protest over the issue for some time, all the BJP and NPP MLAs staged walk-out amidst slogans demanding regularization of daily wagers.
Later, Congress MLA from Inderwal, G M Saroori raised the issue and said that there was no clear stand of the Government about regularization of daily wagers as despite assurances by the then Minister for PHE, Taj Mohu-ud-Din and present Minister, Sham Lal Sharma justice has not been meted out to the workers prompting them to resort to chain hunger strike. “The regularization exercise should be made time-bound”, he demanded.
PDP MLA, Abdul Rehman Veeri too joined the issue and said, “the department is utilizing their services but not ready to pay them wages and this is grave injustice with them”.
Intervening once again, Speaker said, “verification is imperative to ascertain as to whether these daily wagers were engaged by issuing proper cash voucher or only verbally”, adding “unless this exercise is completed they cannot be regularized”.
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