Tribune News Service
Bathinda, January 4
Demanding regularisation of their jobs, employees recruited under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) continued their protest against the state government for the third consecutive day here today.
Raising slogans against the government, the workers staged a protest at the Children’s Park here today.
The workers announced that they would participate in the January 6 Moga rally in a large number to make the state government take note of their demands.
They said during the rally, the protesters would make the public aware of the alleged anti-employee policies of the state government.
The employees had started their new year by wearing black badges and started an indefinite protest in favour of their long-pending demands. Addressing the workers, union leaders said all that the MGNREGA workers had got from the state government was step-motherly treatment and hollow promises in the name of heeding their demands.
They said close to 1,200 MGNREGA workers had been working on different posts in various departments in the Rural Development and Panchayat Department for the past seven years.
They maintained that instead of regularising their jobs, the state government only extends their contract by a year till March 31.
The workers pointed out that like recruitment for any other government job, they were also made to go through proper channel of recruitment, including advertisement for the posts and interviews for selection of candidates, yet their jobs had not been regularised for the past seven years.
The leaders added that the authorities were now advertising for recruitment to fill the posts lying vacant in the department instead of regularising jobs of employees who were at present working on a contractual basis.
The union leaders demanded that the department should first regularise the jobs of the employees who were recruited under MGNREGA and then advertise for fresh recruitment to fill the remaining posts.
The union members alleged that the state government was not keen on regularising their jobs since it was exploiting the employees by paying them meagre salaries but making them shoulder many responsibilities. They threatened that in case the state government and the Rural Development and Panchayat Department continue to ignore their demands, they would intensify their stir.
