Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 6: The police resorted to mild lathi-charge on the protesting retired/ VRS given SRTC workers and foiled their Sarkar Virodh rally to Civil Secretariat here today.
A large number of normally retired and volunteer retirement given SRTC workers assembled at Exhibition Ground near Press Club here in the morning around 11 am and started protest demonstration. Dev Raj Bali, president All J&K SRTC Volunteer Retired Employees Association was leading. He was supported by general secretary Surinder Singh, vice president Balwinder Singh and others.
The protesting VRS given SRTC workers were raising slogans in support of their demands. They also shouted slogans against the Finance and Transport authorities for not releasing pending COLA arrears along with leave salary, gratuity, ex-gratia grant to 742 VRS/GHS employees of SRTC which amounts to Rs 30.16 crore. This huge amount is lying with the Finance department of J&K Civil Sectt Jammu for the last four years. It is unfortunate that Finance Department is not releasing this amount due to unknown reasons. These funds are being misused by the Government.
They were demanding release of 126 slabs of COLA due from Ist January 2006 and implementation of 6th Pay Commission fully from January 2006. They demanded a high level inquiry into the alleged misuse of funds meant for VRS given SRTC workers.
After staging brief protest demonstration as the workers started their rally towards Gumat and Civil Secretariat, the police raised barricades and stopped them. The workers resisted however, amidst mild lathicharge, the protest rally was foiled. The workers then dispersed.
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