Excelsior Correspondent
UDHAMPUR, Aug 3: Senior vice president of PHE Employees Association, Jammu province, Som Nath, strongly criticized the authorities of PHE Department for not conceding the genuine demands of the PHE workers and employees and violating the Minimum Wages Act.
Mr Som Nath who is also president of the district unit was addressing a meeting of the Association for Udhampur and Reasi districts at PHE Complex, Udhampur said that Government regularized 12000 workers in Kashmir valley in 2013, who were engaged after 2005 and prior to their regularization were getting Rs 4500 per month while in Jammu province not even a single daily wager was regularized.
He said the Minister for PHE, Irrigation and Flood Control, Sukhnandan Choudhary was only concerned about the new water supply schemes but not about engaging the requisite manpower to run those schemes and as a result the workers have not been paid their dues for the past 30 months thus creating a starvation like situation for the workers and their families.
He said Government has only fed these poor workers with false promises and did nothing for them.
The other long pending genuine demands highlighted in the meeting pertained to: Release of pending wages; Regularization of all workers who have completed five years service as daily wager/ ITI and CP workers; Implementation of Minimum Wages Act by fixing wage rate for two categories viz regular and daily wagers; Making arrangement of sufficient staff to man several new water supply schemes on which crores of rupees have been expended but the requisite staff has not been provided so far; Change of designation as per nature of job actually being done by the workers; Immediate payment to those workers who have been engaged in lieu of land donated to the Department; Enhancement of wages to Rs 400 per day; Release of 17% cash DA arrears to PHE employees; and Making permanent the daily rated workers while implementing the fast track recruitment policy.
Mr Som Nath appealed the Chief Minister Mufti Mohd Sayeed and the PHE Minister Sukhnandan Choudhary to immediately release the pending wages of workers otherwise no wage no work policy will be adopted.
Those who spoke included Vijay Kumar (general secretary), Suraj Parkash, Baldev Raj (president Reasi), Makhan Chand, Shiv Lal, Kuldeep Kumar, Rajinder Kumar, Chunni Lal, Ved Parkash, Shambu Dutt, Ganesh Chand, Karan Singh, Prem Nath, Jabber Singh etc.
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