Roadways workers seek redressal of issues

Ajay Joshi

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 2

Punjab Roadways/ Punbus Contract Workers Union held a meeting at the city bus stand on Sunday, in which they urged the government to put an end to the recruitment of workers through outsource contractual process.

Resham Singh Gill, state president of the union, said “The government, in 2016, had passed the Welfare Act 2016 to convert outsourced workers into contractual workers after three years of service and contractual workers to regular workers, after another three years of service. However, Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government has not implemented the Act. Besides, the State Transport authorities were ignorant of the fact that they had to unnecessarily give around Rs 5 crore to the contractors as GST amount, imposed upon the salaries of the workers”.

Hence, if the government recruited workers through direct contract basis, this money could be saved. Gill further alleged that the new contractors, operating under the name of Datar Security Services, had inflicted hard conditions on the outsourced workers, making them suffer. Therefore, the authorities must withdraw the system of recruiting on outsourcing basis and the existing outsourced workers should be converted into contractual workers.

Reportedly, the union leader also claimed that they had recently held a meeting with the secretary, State Transport, in which they were assured that all workers would shortly be converted into contractual workers. However, nothing had been done in this regard.

The workers said if the government failed to comply with their demands up till April 30, they would organise a state-level protest on May 1 in Patiala. The protest would be organised under the banner of Theka Mulazim Sangharsh Union, which comprises of around 35 unions and more than 1,50,000 workers. The workers also hinted towards gheraoing the Chief Minister’s residence.

Meanwhile, the union leaders, including the state president, general secretary Baljit Singh, state convener Kamal Kumar and others, also spoke against the Transport Ministry’s proposal to merge Roadways into private bodies.