Excelsior Correspondent
UDHAMPUR, July 17: Water Works (PHE) Employees Association Udhampur held a massive strong protest in PHE Complex here under the chairmanship of Som Nath, district president PHE Employees Association Udhampur and senior vice president of the Association for Jammu province.
The employees and workers drawn from Chenani, Ghordi, Ramnagar, Dudu, Latti, Majalta, Krimchi, Mansar, Johnu Barta, Tikri, Jib, Thathi, Panchari and other areas of the district assembled at PHE Complex and held strong demonstration and also observed Kaam Chor Hartal during the protest amidst raising of slogans in support of their demands. District president Som Nath while addressijg strongly condemned the attitude of the State Government for not releasing the wages for the past 38 to 40 months of the poor workers of the department and regularization of CP workers who have completed 5 years of service in the department and so much so some of them have not been regularized even after rendering 18 years service. Som Nath appealed the Chief Minister to intervene in the matter for resolving long pending demand of release of wages. He wondered that when thousands of crores of rupees can be made available for projects why not for providing wages to the poor workers. He also appealed the leaders of all the associations of PHE Department to unite and be prepared for agitation as the State Government is not willing to fulfill genuine long pending demands of employees as well as workers of the department.
The other demands discussed pertained to Implementation of Minimum Wages Act; Immediate regularization of workers awaiting regularization for the past so many years; Revision of sanctioned strength of the department, as there was no revision of sanctioned strength of field functionaries of the department for the past 40 years; Meeting shortage of staff to effectively man the on-going water supply schemes; Change of designation as per nature of job being performed by the workers; Payment to those engaged in lieu of land donation; and Enhancement in daily wage rate to Rs 150 to Rs 400. Association general secretary Vijay Kumar in his address warned the Government to resort to ‘No Work- No Wages’ in case their wages were not released nat an earliest.
Others who spoke on the occasion were Makhan Chand, Jagdish Magotra, Krishan Chand, Dinesh Kesar, Kuldeep Kumar, Baldev Singh, Shamsher Singh, Rakesh Kumar, Janait Ali, Bharat Singh, Shambhu Dutt, Karan Singh, ShamLal etc.
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