Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 18: All J&K SRTC Volunteer Retired Employees Association today staged a protest demonstration here in front of Press Club, against State SRTC for not clearing their pending dues.
Addressing the protesting VRS employees’ Union president, Dev Raj Bali and general secretary, Surinder Singh, strongly criticized the discriminative attitude of SRTC Department and higher authorities of Transport Department towards VRS and GHS employees of State SRTC.
“We took VRS/GHS on the assurances that our dues will be released within 60 days but it is sorry to state that we are struggling for the same for last so many years”, they said, adding that their case for pending dues like COLA arrears, leave salary, gratuity, ex-gratia grant and pending bills was misrepresented before the Finance Department due to which the bills amounting to Rs 30,16,10, 673 have been lying for last three years in the Finance Department.
“It is very strange that 126 slabs of COLA is give to the in-service employees of State SRTC whereas same has been denied to 742 VRS/GHS employees despite the fact that they were in service at the time of implementation of 6th Pay Commission”, said Dev Raj Bali.
Others present were Balwinder Singh, D N Sharma, B B Sharma, Surjit Singh, Sain Mohd and Kulbir Singh.