UPNL workers lathi-charged

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, June 28

The police today lathi-charged employees of UPNL while they were marching towards the Secretariat, leaving several of them injured. The employees have threatened to intensify the agitation to build pressure on the state government.

As many as 18,000 employees, under the aegis of the UPNL Karamchari Mahasangh, continued their statewide protest for the second consecutive day at Raipur bus stand. The protesters demanded that the Congress-led state government draft a proposal to regularise their services in government departments.

The protesters, carrying placards, marched through Lansdowne Chowk, Kanak Chowk and Subhash road and raised slogans against the state government.

The police personnel had a heated argument with the protesters as they did not allow the latter to hold a protest near the Secretariat. A scuffle ensued and the police resorted to a lathi- charge near the police headquarters.

Earlier, Bhawesh Jagudi, state president of UPNL Karamchari Mahasangh, said they had given memorandums highlighting their demands, including regularisation of services and removal of pay anomaly, to public representatives and top bureaucrats but to no avail.

He lamented that former Soldiers’ Welfare Minister Harak Singh Rawat had given them false assurances that their demands would be fulfilled soon. The agitated workers have decided to intensify the protest in support of their demands which were pending for the past two years, he added.

Meanwhile, routine works in different government departments in the Garhwal and Kumaon divisions of the state were badly affected due to the strike.