Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 27: Former Minister and senior Congress leader, Raman Bhalla today urged Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha to act as a bridge between the people and the administration.
While interacting with people of Old Sekh Nagar in Bahu Fort as a part of his mass contact programmes in different parts of Gandhi Nagar constituency to listen to grievances of people he observed that keeping in view present scenario, there is an urgent need to reach out to the people at the grassroots, understand them and their aspirations and convey these to the policymakers in Delhi.
Bhalla said that it is most unfortunate that the common people have no medium to raise their voice for their basic necessities like water, power, healthcare and education due to the neglect of Administration. The people have to come on roads to express their anger and seek redressal of their genuine grievances. The utter failure of BJP which had the mandate of Jammu region since 2014 to carry forward the projects initiated by the previous Government both at State and Centre level and to upgrade the infrastructure and augument various supply schemes, have resulted into total mess and several projects are either at standstill or going on snail’s paces, causing great loss to Jammu region.
Bhalla said that drinking water supply to the Jammu region has been hit for the past 24 hours as thousands of the Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department daily earners and regular employees went on a strike. Strike was called by the employees’ unions in the Jammu region, which affected lakhs of people. They took the strike decision as the administration has failed to release the pending wages of daily earners. Even the DPC of the regular employees is not been carried out on time due to which there is resentment among them. The regular employees have extended their support to the daily earners,” said Bhalla.
“Despite repeated assurances, the Government has befooled the daily earners for six years. They are without wages. This is the biggest human rights violation,” said Bhalla. The Medical Assistant and Pharmacist diploma holders are on strike also demanding the Government to issue orders of the registration and drug license and preferences employment in the Government sector. After the Abrogation of Article 370 the Central Government rules have been implemented in Jammu and Kashmir, they are not eligible for the criteria to apply for the registration under the Pharmacy Council of India, he added.
Former Minister alleged that only false promises were made with over 61,000 casual labour and other workers engaged in various departments by previous Government, he added.