MGNREGA dues: Panchayat members’ strike from today

Tribune News Service

Jammu, December 2

Elected panchayat members from the Kashmir valley and Jammu division today demanded for security cover to all sarpanches and panches in the vulnerable areas and warned that the administration would be responsible for any harm to them.

Extending support to the hunger strike called by the All Jammu Kashmir Panchayat Conference (AJKPC) from tomorrow against the non-payment of Rs 1,000-crore MGNREGA liabilities, the sarpanches and panches also demanded for enhancement of their monthly honorarium from existing Rs 2,500 (sarpanch) and Rs 1,000 (panch) to a “respectable and reasonable” amount.

“We extend our fullest support to the eight-day-long hunger strike called by AJKPC state president Anil Sharma from tomorrow against the non-payment of over Rs 1,000-crore MGNREGA liabilities. The government has become insensitive and indifferent to the miseries of rural masses and the non-payment of wages to poor labourers for years together is the biggest example of it,” Bilal Ahmad Wani, a sarpanch of south Kashmir’s Anantnag, said here.

Wani referred to the recent terror attack on the ‘Back to Village’ programme in Anantnag that claimed the lives of a sarpanch and an agriculture officer and said the panchayat members in the Kashmir valley had been working under tremendous pressure and security threat “to strengthen the grass-roots level democracy” but the successive regimes “ignored” their security concerns.

“We had been demanding for security cover for the AJKPC leadership so that they can move freely in the Kashmir valley. Unfortunately, over one and a half dozens of panchayat members have been gunned down in Kashmir since 2011 but the government did not bother to provide security cover to the people facing life threats,” Wani said.

‘Govt insensitive to miseries of rural masses’

We extend our fullest support to the eight-day-long hunger strike called by All Jammu Kashmir Panchayat Conference state president Anil Sharma from tomorrow against the non-payment of over Rs 1,000-crore MGNREGA liabilities. The government has become insensitive and indifferent to the miseries of rural masses and the non-payment of wages to poor labourers for years together is the biggest example of it. Bilal Ahmad Wani, a sarpanch of Anantnag