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Punjab govt staff plan mass leave on Sept 8 if notices not withdrawn
After a three-hour discussion, the Joint Coordination Committee of government employees unveiled an elaborate road map for escalated agitation, including another mass casual leave on October 21 and 22
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Stepping up confrontation with the Punjab government, the protesting staff, under the banner of “Punjab Sanjha Mulazim Manch” (Joint Employees’ Forum), on Sunday decided to go on mass leave on September 8 if notices issued to them over the August 27 strike are not withdrawn.
The move followed a meeting of different unions in Ludhiana to decide the next course of action. After a three-hour discussion, the Joint Coordination Committee of government employees unveiled an elaborate road map for escalated agitation, including another mass casual leave on October 21 and 22.
“The government’s inability to address the demands of employees, pensioners and honorarium workers has left them with no option but to intensify the agitation,” said Hardeep Todarpur, spokesperson of the employee unions.
On Saturday, the Punjab government had directed all administrative secretaries and department heads to issue show-cause notices and initiate strict action under applicable service rules against staff found absent from duty without authorisation on August 27 to protest against the state government.
This followed an earlier directive issued by the department of personnel on August 27, ordering all special chief secretaries, additional chief secretaries, financial commissioners, principal secretaries and administrative secretaries to share the list of absentees with the department of general administration.
Over 150 employees’ bodies, under the banner of Punjab Sanjha Mulazim Manch, had joined hands for the “maha hartal” on August 27 to press the state government to accept their long-pending demands.
The shutdown had paralysed state administrative machinery as roughly 4 lakh staff took leave, backed by 3.5 lakh pensioners protesting at district, sub-divisional and block offices.
The same day, the Joint Coordination Committee of the government employees was called to Jalandhar for talks with chief minister Bhagwant Mann, but the latter refused to give an audience, posting on X that while staff are part of the state’s family, “dialogue and strikes cannot proceed together”, escalating tensions.
The employees are pushing for the release of an 18% dearness allowance backlog, the restoration of the Old Pension Scheme, and the regularisation of contractual workers.
They are also seeking implementation of minimum wages for mid-day meal, ASHA and Anganwadi workers, restoration of the Assured Career Progression (ACP) scheme and extension of Punjab pay scales to employees recruited after July 17, 2020.
Employees on warpath
The Ludhiana meeting came up with several measures to press for demands, including gheraoing native residences of AAP ministers and MLAs and holding an “Employees’ Assembly”.
The unions accused the Mann government of repeatedly making promises with the employees and then failing to honour those commitments.
According to Sukhchain Singh Khaira, who heads the Joint Coordination Committee of the employees unions, protesters will gherao the residences of Punjab cabinet ministers on September 12 and 13.
The September 12 demonstrations will take on assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan, deputy speaker Jai Krishan Singh Rouri, and cabinet ministers Harbhajan Singh ETO and Dr Balbir Singh. The next day they will gherao ministers Lal Chand Kataruchak, Harjot Singh Bains and Aman Arora.
The residences of remaining ministers and AAP MLAs will be gheraoed on September 19-20, Khaira added.
The committee further announced that on September 30, they will hold an “Employees’ Assembly” and invite MLAs of all 117 constituencies, as well as the 13 Lok Sabha MPs of the state, to Chandigarh to clarify their stand on the employees’ issues.
A “Maha Rally” of employees will be held in Sangrur on October 10, in which thousands of employees are expected to participate. If their demands are still not met, employees will observe a two-day mass leave on October 21 and 22.
