Staff Reporter
ITANAGAR, 17 Aug: The Arunachal Pradesh Trade Union Federation (APTUF) on Saturday reiterated its demand for enhancement of the pay scale and pay grade of all work-charged (WC) employees in various departments of the state.
Addressing mediapersons at the press club here, APTUF secretary-general Kengkar Yomcha said that the WC staffers in “the power, public health engineering, and engineering departments” have not received any raise in their salaries.
“The unequal pay grade of the WC employees is discriminatory,” he said.
The union had earlier announced to impose a phase-wise general strike from 11 March to 10 April, but had called it off owing to the elections and the implementation of the model code of conduct.
“This year, during the state Assembly session, discussions were held on regularising casual workers who have served for more than 15 years in various government departments; however, no
notification in this regard has yet been issued,” Yomcha said, and demanded that it be implemented at the earliest.
On 14 August, the federation had submitted a memorandum to the chief minister, reminding him of its demands. Now it has included a fresh demand its earlier six demands: implementation of golden handshake.
Saying that there are more than 40,000 workers in the state, it requested the state government to grant Rs 10 lakhs to the retired contractual workers “and compensate appointment to the next of kin of the retired workers.”
Its other demands include “creation of WC employees of all engineering departments; regularisation of the contingency or casual workers who have completed 15 years and above in government departments; enhancement of the existing wages of the contingency workers to Rs 1,000; regularising the auxiliary labour corps (ALC); and declaring a gazetted holiday on International Workers’ Day on 1 May.”
