By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 16 Feb: Uttarakhand Purva Sainik Kalyan Nigam Ltd (UPNL) employees today staged a demonstration at the Parade Grounds and then marched to the official residence of Sainik Kalyan Minister Ganesh Joshi on New Cantt Road and gheraoed it in pursuit of their demands.
It may be recalled that UPNL employees are currently agitating in support of various demands and, due to their agitation, work in many offices where a large number of UPNL employees are posted has been severely affected,
Thousands of UPNL employees gathered at the parade ground here this morning and marched towards New Cantt Road, where they gheraoed Minister Joshi’s residence. As a result, there was a scuffle between the security forces and the protesters.
President of the UPNL Mahasangh, Vinod Godiyal, said that the government should as soon as possible implement the order of the High Court on regularisation and give equal pay for equal work. He said the government should withdraw the SLP filed in the Supreme Court against the decision of the High Court. Reminding that UPNL employees in the state number around 25,000, they would with their families teach the government a lesson in the Lok Sabha elections in case their demands are not met.
It may be recalled that, two days ago, Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami had declared that the government would soon raise the wages of UPNL employees by ten percent but this assurance has been rejected by the UPNL Mahasangh as insufficient. It may also be recalled that UPNL had been set up as an autonomous corporation by the state government to offer re-employment to ex-army officials or their dependants on contractual basis in various government departments. This is a contractual appointment and presently around 25,000 persons are working as UPNL employees in the state. From time to time, UPNL employees have demanded equal pay for equal work and regularisation of their services. In fact, the Uttarakhand High Court too had directed the state government to fulfil these conditions but the order has been challenged by the state government in the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, veteran Congress leader Harish Rawat, who too had faced an agitation by UPNL employees during his chief ministership and had rejected their demands, has now lent support to the demands. Today, he observed one hour of silence at his residence in support of the demands. Harish Rawat claimed that the UPNL employees have been victims of atrocities for a long time. Some of them have spent a large part of their lives as UPNL employees but still do not have service security. He said that their regularisation should have been done long ago, but the government is not taking their demands seriously. Rawat said that all the important services of the state are being run through these employees, but the government is not providing them protection and is also not increasing the honorarium. Being a parent, himself, he is very saddened by this. He said that this is not a political but a collective fight.
