IMPHAL, February 20: Government employees will go on an indefinite strike from March 5 after a two-day mass casual leave protest on February 21 and 22 to protest against the government’s decision of considering the demands of the Join Administrative Council of All Manipur Trade Unions Council (AMTUC) and All Manipur Government Employee Organisation (AMGEO).
However, Medical, Electricity, Water Supply and Education departments will be excluded from the agitation in the first phase.
In a press meet at the office of the JAC of the two bodies on Thursday afternoon, the senior vice president of JAC, B Ghanashyam said that the government and JAC of two organisations agreed to implement the sixth finance pay commission in toto. But the state government hasn’t implemented the 6th Pay commission in full swing at the state.
“The central government has started the process to implement seventh pay commission for its employees considering the rise in prices of essential commodities. Similarly, other state governments except Manipur have begun preparations to implement the seventh pay commission.”
He stated that despite 13 years of congress rule in the state, the 6th pay commission is not fully implemented with the excuse that it has no sufficient funds.
“An agreement was signed between JAC and the government three years ago but unfortunately not a single demand of the JAC has been fulfilled. It is now crystal clear that the government has no concerned for its employees. Now, what we are demanding is our rights of being a government employee,” Ghanashyam said.
General secretary Purujit Lairikyengbam said that the government has always cited insufficient funds as the reason for not meeting our demands of implementing the 6th pay commission.
“We told our grievances to the representatives of the 14th finances commission who recently visited the state and after meeting them we came to know that appropriate funds were released in the 13th finance commission. We hope that enough funds will be earmarked for state govt employees in the 14th finance commission,” he said, adding that the 6th pay commission is implemented just for namesake in the state but we did not get any benefits.
He alleged that the state government is also violating its own rule and regulation by not employing new educated youths and re-arranging senior employees by shifting them from one post to another.
L Tombi, general secretary of Manipur State Pensioner Union said that 6000 pensioner is in the union now with the government giving only 72 percent of its earlier salary, 18 percent less from central government employees.
“Pensioners will stage a sit-in-protest at Singjamei and follow it with various forms of agitation later to protest against the government for not giving 105 arrears till date,” said Tombi.
Some of the demands of the employees are the implementation of the Modified Assurance Careers Progression (ACP), payment of the rate of Travelling allowance (TA) with the rate of Dearness Allowance (DA), Children Education allowance, Merger of 50 % DA/DR with basic pay/pension as it has crossed 50 % of pay as on January 1, 2011 as it was done in the years 2004.