Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, July 18: The temporary and other daily rated workers of the Power Development Department (PDD) are sitting on protest dharna/ strike outside the office of Chief Engineer (EM&RE) Canal Road here for the last 20 days.
The workers under the banner of PDD Employees Union/ Daily Wagers Union are sitting on protest dharna in support of their long pending demands. The agitating employees including Union leaders are demanding regularization of temporary workers and release of their pending wages/ arrears.
They strongly raised the issue of disparity and discrimination against the PDD workers from Jammu and Kathua districts. They pointed out that Jammu is the largest district in the region and only 321 workers were regularized from this district while hardly 60 workers were cleared for regularization from Kathua. They said on comparing with the other districts, it has been observed that the daily wagers of Udhampur, Doda, Rajouri and Poonch districts have been regularised up to 2004 whereas, the daily rated workers of Jammu and Kathua have been regularized up to 09/1997 and 03/1995, respectively. This type of sheer injustice with these daily wagers is unacceptable. In Kashmir all such daily wagers have been regularised up to 2005.
They demanded that all the workers of these two districts who have rendered five years of service be regularized and the pending wages/ arrears of the workers be cleared without any further delay.
The workers were addressed by Bharat Singh, Arvind Sharma, Gul Mohd, Vinod Sharma, Ashwani Kumar, Ajay Sharma and others.
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