JK News Today

Jammu, December 30:

Supporting the cause of the striking NHM employees, Harsh Dev Singh JKNPP chairman today lambasted the govt for aggravating the crisis due to its dilly dally approach over the most genuine demand of the protestors for a suitable Job policy.

Harshdev said that with medical services having been adversely affected due to the ongoing agitation, the lackadaisical approach of H&ME Deptt was further adding fuel to fire. Seeking a fair deal for them, he said that the contractual employees engaged under the Health Mission on paltry honorarium for several years were not only deprived of adequate emoluments but faced a highly uncertain future in the absence of any Job policy. He said that issuance of threats, use of police force and Lathi-charge against the said  employees was no solution to the long pending demand of the said employees who had been repeatedly assured of settlement of their issues by the govt without initiating any step in that regard. He was addressing the protestors today at Exhibition Ground near Press Club today.

Terming the apathetic nonchalant approach of the govt as exploitative, Mr. Singh said that it would have to evolve a suitable job policy commensurate with its oft repeated slogans and thereby assuring them job security and sustainable livelihood. He said that thousands of highly qualified youth had been engaged on consolidated basis under NHM by the govt since the launch of the said schemes without revising their salaries or framing any policy with respect to their regularization. He said that such employees were made to work like bonded labourers on negligible honorarium despite repeated govt assurances of pay parity with their counterparts in the regular establishments.

He said that the Supreme Court had very categorically ruled that paying less wages to an employee as compared to a similarly situated constituted exploitative subjugation and hence violative of the fundamental guarantees enshrined in the constitution.