Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 26: Expressing serious concern over the non payment of wages of DRWs, Casuals, Need based and other categories of temporary employees of PHE, PDD, I&FC, PWD, Tourism etc, JKNPP Chairman and former Minister Harsh Dev Singh made a passionate appeal on their behalf to the State Governor to intervene personally to address their most legitimate concerns.
Launching a scathing attack on the Government for its criminal apathy and indifference towards the genuine concerns of such daily rated workers, Singh said that it had made the most contemptuous mockery of the slogans of Welfare State so prominently enshrined in the constitution of the State. He said that timely payment of wages and salaries was not only a fundamental duty of the State but had been repeatedly acknowledged as a fundamental and basic right of a Government employee. He regretted that the Daily wagers of several Departments, especially PHE and I&FC had been deprived of their wages for periods ranging from 3 to 4 years resulting in untold miseries and starvation to their families.
“While salaries and all allowances of all officers and bureaucrats were never delayed even by a single day, the non payment of wages to poor labourers was not a lapse but a sin for which the Government and its functionaries were answerable before men and God,” he said and added that if funds were available for luxuries and comforts of politicians, officers and bureaucrats, the excuse of empty coffers for poor DRWs was ridiculous and hypocritical.
Harsh Dev Singh further called upon the Governor to review the honorarium of SPOs besides Anganwari and Asha workers who were made to work on negligible wages despite being whole time Government employees. He said that utilizing the services of these lower rung employees for pittance amounted to not only their exploitative enslavement but was a human rights violation of the worst form. He also deplored the non initiation of any action for regularization of MGNREGA and NHM workers who had been assured umpteen times by successive Government of early settlement of their legitimate and bona-fide issues. He said that the Governor was the only ray of hope for such marginalized and aggrieved temporary employees of the State.
Follow our WhatsApp channel