Excelsior Correspondent
UDHAMPUR, Oct 3: After being denied their wages for the last over 55 long months, hundreds of PHE workers held strong protest demonstration at PHE complex here today.
A large number of PHE workers/ daily wagers from parts of Reasi and entire Udhampur district assembled at the PHE Complex Udhampur during the day today under the banner of Water Works/ PHE Employees Association led by Som Nath (president) and staged strong protest. They strongly condemned the attitude of the previous BJP-PDP Government and the State Administration led by Governor, Satya Pal Malik for ignoring their issues.
While addressing large gathering, Som Nath alleged that despite representations to senior officers, bureaucrats and the Advisors besides ministers in the previous Government, the authorities failed to clear the wages of the workers, who are performing their duties at their respective water stations. They are facing worst kind of exploitation at the hands of the Government. No Human Rights body has even bothered to listen to the plight of these ‘bonded labourers’ in the PHE department, he said.
These helpless workers are unable to feed their families and continue the studies of their children. Some children have dropped out as their parents failed to pay school fees. He said that Governor and the concerned Advisor must take cognizance of the matter and clear the wages of the workers in phased manner, if not in one go.
Som Nath further demanded regularization of CP/ ITI and Land case workers of PHE, remove shortage of staff at water stations and other PHE offices, clear pending SRO-43 cases, conduct DPC at Divisional and Provincial level, change the designation of the employees as per their nature of work and also release wages of imprest workers engaged about 15 years ago.
He appealed all the PHE workers units to take drastic action against the policies of the Govt. He also demanded that wages of the workers be released before Diwali festival.
Senior trade union leaders -Vijay Kumar, Suraj Parkash, Dinesh Kesar, Makhan Chand, Baldev Raj, Krishan Chand, Balveer Singh, Amit Dubey and others also spoke in the meeting.
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