Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 18: Suppo-rting the cause of the striking NREGA employees working on contractual basis for the last around 10 years since the launch of the flagship scheme in 2007-08 in the State, former minister and NPP chairman Harsh Dev Singh today called upon the Govt to evolve a suitable job policy commensurate with its often repeated slogans and thereby assuring them job security and sustainable livelihood.
Singh 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 Administrative 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.
Harsh Dev who was visited the venue of protest by the agitating MGNREGA employees addressed the gathering and assured all possible support for their genuine issues. 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.
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 judgment 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.
Singh said that the Supreme Court had very categorically ruled that paying less wages to an employee as compared to a similarly situated constituted exploitative subjugation and hence violative of the fundamental guarantees enshrined in the constitution.
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