Police foils march by VRS employees of SRTC

Excelsior Correspondent

JAMMU, Nov 10: Police today foiled an attempt of taking out a march towards Civil Secretariat by members of All J&K SRTC Volunteer Retired Employees Association who were protesting against State SRTC for not clearing their pending dues.
Shouting slogans in support of their demands, the VRS employees assembled near the Press Club and marched towards Civil Secretariat in the form of a procession. However, Police did not allow them to move further.
The protest rally was headed by VRS employees’ Union president, Dev Raj Bali and general secretary, Surinder Singh, who strongly criticized the discriminative attitude of SRTC and higher authorities of Transport Department towards VRS and GHS employees of State SRTC.
They alleged that their (VRS and GHS employees’) case for pending dues like COLA arrears, leave salary, gratuity, ex-gratia grant and pending bills was misrepresented before the Finance Department due to which the bills amounting to Rs 30,16,10, 673 have been lying for last three years in the Finance Department. They demanded that this huge amount lying with the Finance Department deserves compound interest at the rate of 12 percent per annum.
“It is very strange that 126 slabs of COLA is given to the in-service employees of State SRTC whereas same has been denied to 742 VRS/GHS employees despite the fact that they were in service at the time of implementation of 6th Pay Commission”, said Dev Raj Bali.
He also reiterated other demands of the Association, which included clearing 16 pending installments of COLA since 2006, 18 installments of 2007, 26 installments of COLA since 2008, 35 installments of COLA since 2009, 31 installments of COLA upto 2010, pending arrears since 1999 and 6th Pay Commission arrears with effect from January 1, 2006.
Other who addressed the protest rally, included Balwinder Singh, J D Singh, Gulshan Singh, D N Sharma, Surjit Singh, Prem Nath, Sain Mohd and Kulbir Singh.

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