61,000 families to be affected as daily wagers face govt axe

Amit Khajuria

Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 26

A sense of insecurity and aguish prevailed among the 61,000 daily wagers and casual workers of the state after the respective government department started the process of terminating their services.

Sacking these workers will not only affect the functioning of the departments, but it will also affect the livelihood of 61,000 families of Jammu and Kashmir.

Thousands of workers engaged in different departments of the state under different schemes have been left in the lurch, as the government initiated the process of sacking them.

“This is a human issue. These people have been working in different departments for the last 15-20 years on meager wages and still their salaries are pending for more than a year now. Sacking them is like playing with the lives of 61,000 families,” said Kulwant Singh, president of the J&K Government Employees & Workers Federation.

“The government is exploiting these poor workers. We will fight for their rights and frame a joint action committee, which will start a statewide agitation against the government under one banner,” he said.

Omar Abdullah led NC-Congress government had signed an agreement with the employees’ unions on September 15, 2011, in which they had agreed to the frame a policy on regularisation of daily wagers and casual workers, but the coalition failed to fulfil the agreement during its tenure.

“The previous government failed to fulfil its agreement with employees and they paid a heavy price in the last Assembly elections. If this government sacks these workers, they will also have to bear the resentment of employees,” said president, J&K National Trade Union, Mohammad Gafoor Dar.

He said the employees were waiting for their regularisation after the formation of the BJP-PDP government in the state as they had much expectation from Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Senior vice-president of the Pradesh Congress Committee Sham Lal Sharma said: “How can this government sack daily wagers, they are the lifeline of many of the departments. I wonder, how will this government run their departments if they sack these workers.”

“If I talk about the Public Health Engineering (PHE), Irrigation and Flood Control, the department needs a staff of 68,000. About 20,000 people were already working in the department and 23,711 were engaged as contractual/daily wagers, but it still requires about 25,000 workers to run the department smoothly. How will they operate such an important department without these daily wagers?” the former minister asked.