Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, mid-day meal scheme contract staff meet Bhagwant Mann

Jalandhar, April 17

A delegation of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and mid-day meal scheme employees met Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann today on his visit to Jalandhar to accompany party’s candidate Sushil Rinku for filing nomination papers for the upcoming bypoll. The employees have been demanding regularisation of their jobs and stopping the ‘salary cut’ of the bloc-level employees.

The employees yesterday also met Finance Minister Harpal Cheema. For the past few days, they have been visiting AAP’s MLAs, ministers and among other workers, and even held a massive protest to put forward their demand of regularisation and the issue of ‘salary cut’.

“This is the only time when we can meet the ministers and MLAs easily as elections are approaching, thus, we have been regularly holding meetings with the political leaders with the hope that our demands would be met”, said employees.

SSA employees Shobhit Bhagat and Gagandeep Sharma said the Chief Minister had announced the appointment of 8,736 contractual employees of the Education Department on September 5, 2022, and issued a notification in this regard on October 7. But till today, the employees have not received the orders, therefore, they were forced to hold protests, meet ministers and MLAs to remind them of their promises.

They said apart from this, the block-level employees were facing a ‘salary cut’ of Rs 5,000, which is gross injustice to them as despite being from the same cadre, they were being paid less. “We have informed the Education Minister and the Finance Minister several times about this issue, but nothing has been done”, they added.

The employees informed that the CM Mann listened to their demands, and promised to resolve all their issues in a panel meeting, which would be held in Chandigarh after April 20.