MGNREGA workers demand regular jobs

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, September 16

Members of the MGNREGA Workers’ Union staged a protest and raised slogans against the government, demanding regularisation of jobs and increase in their wages outside the office of the BDPO near Grain Market area on Monday.

Kor Singh, president of the union, said they had been demanding regular work and wages according to the Act. He said the state government was not providing them work, so they had been forced to lodge a protest. “Despite rendering our services diligently for the past many years, the government did not regularise us. The Union Government had been adopting anti-labour policies, ever since it had come to power in 2014. The labour laws have been repealed to benefit big entrepreneurs. For the first time in five years, the government allocated lesser budget than the actual expenditure of the previous year,” he said.

The union members alleged that the proposed budget for 2019-20 was Rs 60,000 crore, which would be 4.4 per cent less than the previous allocations.

Singh said even payments of MNERGA workers were not given in time and many were still waiting for their dues. The said if the government did not increase the budget, many poor labourers would die of hunger.