Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, July 16: Employees of LIC of India in Jammu & Kashmir under the banner of NZIEA Srinagar Division strongly opposed the policies of the NDA Government resulting in privatization of public sector and selling the wealth of the nation in the hands of the Corporates.
“The Government is bent upon privatizing electricity, coal mines, defense production, Air India, BSNL, GIC,LIC and other profit making as well nonprofit making public sector. Public sector means the wealth of the Nation. It is the public sector which saved, to a greater extent, the Indian economy during worldwide economic meltdown in 2008,” a NZIEA spokesman said.
Pawan Gupta, Divisional secretary NZIEA Srinagar Division, accompanied by Divisional Committee members, Romesh Chand and Rajesh Gupta (Joint Secretaries), Dinesh Kumar Sharma, vice president, Raj Kumar Sharma, Treasurer, Rajesh Kumar, Raj Kumar, said the Association strongly opposes the move of the NDA Government to privatise 151 trains covering 109 pair of stations. It is a universal fact that the basic object of the privatization is to earn profit. And to earn profit, there is attack on workers right.
He said there will be retrenchment and effect on salaries of workers. There will be attack on rights of the workers, exploitation of workers will increase and there will be no job security and most importantly , the train journey will be much more costly; because the subsidy given by the Railways will be withdrawn by the private players.
“If we see the experience of Argentina, Railways was privatized there and a result, 705 workers lost their jobs, and many stations were closed, trains started to become much more late, accidents increased. And ultimately people launched the struggle against it and end result was renationalization of the Railways. Somewhat similar experience was in UK. Indian Railways is a very important component of the Indian economy and its privatization means a big jolt to the Indian economy,” he maintained.
Divisional secretary said that the insurance employees firmly stand with the Railway employees in their struggle against privatization.