Troubles dislocating the equilibria of managing JK Cements are more than can be counted and strangely, no one in the hierarchy of the Corporation nor in the Government seems to be bothered about how to put the Government run enterprise back on the sound rails. Since enterprises like the one under reference are labour intensive, it is incumbent upon the management to be engrossed with two main activities. One – how to keep production and earning profits continuously increasing and two – how best was the labour motivated and encouraged to put its best coupled with due care of their payment of wages and salaries, welfare measures, increments , incentives ,free medical facilities, facilities of timely withdrawals from their Provident Funds etc. Imagine a situation where the most important but compulsory Provident Fund amount of employees is not deposited at all in the concerned account and that too for five years in a row.
Such state of affairs is troubling Jammu and Kashmir Government’s Corporation – JK Cements. A whooping amount of Rs. 28 crore pertaining to PF account of its employees has not been accounted for and credited into the individual accounts of the employees. Not only this, nearly 550 employees of the Corporation are without salary for the last nine months. Making things still worse, amount of Rs.1.5 crore pertaining to Employees State Insurance too is not accounted for which has resulted in putting employees to disadvantageous position because free medical treatment is denied to them. Employees working in the Government owned enterprise JK Cements are falling under the category of Industrial Workers where- while ‘no work no wages’ principle is applicable in case workers or employees refuse, slow down, or strike work besides facing other disciplinary action, at the same time the employer, in the instant case the Government has to pay the employees the cost of labour or the wages and cannot withhold, defer or stop payment thereof. Such a situation smacks of a complete mismanagement and messing up of things.
It seems worst than the scenario of the 18th century Industrial Revolution in Britain where labour was exploited and yoked to produce more but not paid proportionate to their work. It is this culture which gave rise to active Trade Unions and their agitation (al) recourse as hunger and want visit every living soul. The employer owners then, in most of the cases, enjoyed at the sweat of the workers and Marxian Surplus value theory and exploitation of workers gained ascendency. Somewhat reminiscent of that culture, the Managing Director of the JK Cements is drawing his own salary every month while the employees are not paid for months together. Before we deal with the reasons of such a pass the enterprise has reached, the “Boss” taking care of himself only by drawing salary, we feel is totally unethical and unexpected while those working under him have not “seen” the wages and salaries for many months, which is totally unacceptable.
Agreed, labour courts, JK Labour Commission like institutions are there to protect the interest of the working class especially falling under the category of Industrial Workers but approaching those platforms and getting relief is time consuming. Still, maintaining silence in the matter concerning labour and their wages and taking no action in the matter by the Labour Commission is intriguing. It is learnt that consequent upon surfacing of grave financial irregularities and mess, some accounts of the Company are stated to have been frozen. A proper high level enquiry into the affairs of the said enterprise of the Government should be instituted and the entire organisational structure revamped. In the meantime, employees’ woes need immediate and prompt redressing.
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