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Himachal Pradesh HC directs GVK EMIR to hike employees’ salary by ₹1,500
The court also relegated the issue to labour authority and fixed six months deadline to decide the dispute
The High Court of Himachal Pradesh on Friday directed the GVK Emergency Management and Research Institute (EMRI) that runs 108 and 102 Ambulance Service in the state, to enhance the take home salary of its employees—Pilots (Drivers) and Emergency Medical Technicians—by Rs 1500 per month.
The enhanced salary will be effective from January 20, 2020.
Passing the order on a suo motu writ on January 8, a division bench comprising chief justice L Narayana Swami and Justice Jyotsna Rewal Dua directed the employees not to indulge in strike or protest in future to approach the Labour Authority within three weeks to raise the matter related to their salaries and overtime.
The Labour Authority has been directed to decide the case of the employees of within six months, preferably before or by June 30, 2020.
Case pertains to 2017 when the employees of GVK-EMRI had gone on strike demanding to enhance their salaries and overtime allowance due to which inconvenience was caused to the patients.
The court observed that the per month salary of Rs 11350 and Rs 11,740 being paid to the pilots and EMTs comes to less than Rs400 per day and with this meager amount, it is very difficult for a person to survive and to feed, to take care of his family and to educate their children.
Moreover, they are supposed to work for more than 12 hours. The counsel for the GVK-EMRI management contended that minimum wages have not been paid to the employees since their services were not notified under Section 24 of the Minimum Wages Act. He also submitted it has not been prescribed in the agreement that for how many hours, the employees have to work per day.
He further stated that the employees work when they receive a call for shifting the patients to the hospitals, thus it cannot be said that for how many hours the employees work per. He also submitted that the GVK-EMRI is unable to pay t minimum wages to the employees as the state government does not pay any additional amount for that apart from Rs 65000 per ambulance per month and challenged the court’s jurisdiction to deal with the matter since the dispute pertains to Labour Laws.
Though the court rejected the contention, allowance relegate this issue to the competent Labour Authority under the Minimum Wages Act.
Court also refused to agree with the proposal given by the council for the employees those salaries of the pilots and EMTs be increased Rs 5000 per month.
