Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 4: On the second day of the strike programme, hundreds of State Govt employees, temporary workers and pensioners from various departments under united platform held strong protest demonstration at Press Club and took out a rally here today.
A large number of employees and pensioners from various Govt departments and Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), besides daily rated/ casual/ need based workers assembled near Exhibition Ground here in the morning despite bad weather and cold wave and started protest demonstration. Several senior Trade union leaders including S Kulwant Singh, Nazir Ahmed Moulvi, Gafoor Dar, Rajinder Kumar, Yash Pal, Subhash Chander, Ajaz Ahmed, Akhil Sharma and others were leading the protest.
The two-day state wide protest programme was organised under the banner of J&K Govt Employees, Casual Labours, Workers and Pensioners United Platform to press the State Govt for immediate settlement of burning demands of state working class which are pending since a long. They alleged that the Coalition Govt in the State has miserably failed to uphold the commitment with the most deserving lot of casual labours of all the departments numbering more than 60,000 despite assurances on the floor of the House.
In such a situation, when the prices of essential commodities are touching the sky and 7th Pay Commission has been implemented for the Central Govt employees, it has also become necessary to implement the same here for the State Govt employees / Public Sector workers & pensioners. However, need base casual labours of all the departments engaged after 1994 are working without any regularization policy since 1994 and most of the highly educated casual labours have become overage and cannot apply anywhere for Govt service.
These poor workers have joined as casual labours in various departments with the hope that one day they will be regularized as done by the Govt under SRO 64, but it is very unfortunate that the successive Govts have completely failed to do justice with this poor section of the casual labours. However, the present Govt has once again raised hopes of casual labours that the regularization policy will be announced soon.
They demanded that casual/ need based and daily wagers be regularized, they should be paid regularly through proper wage head, 7th Pay Commission report be implemented and Medical allowance be hiked from the existing rate.
Later, a massive procession was taken from Press Club to the Civil Secretariat passing through Gumut, Bus Stand and Indira Chowk. But the police did not allow them ahead.
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