Punjab Govt has no agenda to regularise contractual employees: Bikram Singh Majithia

Amritsar, December 18

Former Cabinet minister and senior SAD leader Bikram Singh Majithia has extended support to striking employees of the Transport Department demanding from the AAP government to reinstate 302 Punjab Roadways Transport Corporation (PRTC) and Punbus employees.

Addressing the protesting workers, he said they had been arbitrarily thrown out of service. Majithia asserted that Transport Minister Laljit Bhullar was going back on his word to regularise the services of contractual employees in the transport department. He said Laljit Bhullar had even addressed a protest of the transport employees before the 2022 elections and assured that the AAP government would re-induct all employees whose services had been terminated arbitrarily besides regularising the services of contractual employees.

“Instead of doing this, the transport department is throwing out trained employees who have put in 10 to 15 years of service and is hiring new untrained employees,” Majithia said.

He stated that even though Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had announced that all contractual employees would be regularised, his government was following an insidious agenda by terminating the services of contractual drivers and conductors receiving a salary of Rs 17,000 to Rs 18,000 per month and hiring new recruits at Rs 9,000 per month. “This shows that the government does not have any agenda of regularising contractual employees but has made a plan to do away with their services altogether.”