Non-permanent govt employees to organise rally on July 20

Raipur: The Pragatisheel Aniyamit Karmchari Federation, Chhattisgarh, will host a Dhyan Akarshan rally on July 20 at Tuta in Naya Raipur to highlight the demands of approximately 7,26,847 non-permanent, contractual, and daily wage employees working across various govt offices, departments, and institutions in Chhattisgarh.
State president of the federation, Gopal Prasad Sahu, stated that non-permanent and contractual employees in govt offices across the state are engaged through outsourcing, service providers, contracts, group committees, job rates, daily wages, collector rates, and labour commissioner rates.They have played a crucial role in delivering public welfare schemes to every citizen for the past 5 to 30 years. He expressed dismay that despite their significant contributions to the state’s development, these employees are still labelled as “irregular”. He said that despite court directives on “equal work, equal pay”, these employees are forced to work for less than half the salary of regular employees, without receiving benefits and facilities, akin to “medieval bonded labourers”.

Executive president Prem Prakash Gajendra and secretary Arun Vaishnav added that many senior BJP leaders and public representatives have heard their concerns and promised swift resolution if the BJP govt came to power. However, six months into the tenure of BJP govt, there has been little sensitivity shown towards irregular employees. They said that promises made after the formation of a committee have been forgotten. Federation members including Yugal Kumar Sahu, Ashish Taneja, Rajkumar Sahu, Armaan Sharma, Rajkumar Singh, and Chandrika Vaishnav mentioned that layoffs are occurring in several departments, salaries have been delayed for months, and increased contract rates and labour honorariums are not being honoured. They described how irregular employees are subjected to feudal practices in many departments, causing distress among them.
The federation’s 10-point demands include immediate regularization of employees working on daily wages, collector rates, labour commissioner rates, contracts, and equivalent honorarium/job rates (minimum wage/contract rates) across all departments. They will advocate for job rate employees to be transitioned to monthly minimum wages and regularized within a specified time frame. They will also demand that low-wage employees receive the prescribed minimum wages for their roles and be regularized within a specified period. The federation will seek reinstatement of irregularly dismissed employees from various departments, including women police volunteers, part-time school cleaners in Sitapur, guest teachers, and teaching assistants in Bastar and Rajnandgaon. They will call for the conversion of part-time positions to full-time and regularization within a specified period for employees in Eklavya schools, regular schools, polytechnics, engineering colleges, and ITIs, as well as health centres, yoga instructors, school cleaners, and ITI cleaners. They propose that employees who work intermittently throughout the year, such as guest teachers and lecturers, should be employed continuously.
Moreover, the federation will demand that employees engaged through outsourcing (placement), contracts/groups/committees, and service providers be absorbed into their respective departments and regularized within a specified period. They will urge for nullification of cases filed against irregular employees during protests.