Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 27: Supporting the cause of the striking MG-NREGA employees working on contractual basis for the last around ten years since the launch of the flagship scheme in 2007-08 in the State, NPP chairman and former minister Harsh Dev Singh today called upon the Govt to evolve a suitable job policy.
Addressing protesting MG-NREGA workers here today, NPP leader said that thousands of highly qualified youth had been engaged under the MG-NREGA scheme by the Rural Development Deptt as Programme Officers, Technical Assistants, GRS, MIS Operators, Accounts Assistants, Social Auditors and Adm Assistants on consolidated basis since the launch of the scheme without revising their salaries or framing any policy with respect to their regularization. He said that such employees were made to work like bonded labourers on negligible honorarium despite repeated govt assurances of pay parity with their counterparts in the regular establishments.
Expressing anguish over the exploitation of the young fraternity in the State, Singh said thousands of youth had fled to other States for jobs and several thousands under-employed as casual and need based workers in various departments besides ReTs, NHM and Anganwari workers having been made to languish in open with no wages to them for several months. Similarly, the contractual lecturers working in the educational institutions since 5-15 years with the hope of getting regularized were paid peanut salaries and several of them had been ruthlessly terminated by the Government after exploiting their services for more than a decade, he added.
Dismayed over criminal apathy of the Govt towards the protesting youth including such MG-NREGA employees, Singh wondered that what kind of justice the alliance was doling to the youth where the anti-nationals were given compensation and employment while the educated youth were pushed towards starvation and other miseries.
Decrying the payment of lesser wages to MG-NREGA employees against their regular counterparts, Singh said that the Govt policy was not only discriminatory but also violative of constitutional guarantees. He said that even the Supreme Court in its latest judgement delivered last week has observed that denying equal pay for equal work to temporary employees was oppressive, suppressive and coercive as it compelled involuntary subjugation.
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