SRINAGAR : The Public Health Engineering (PHE) daily wagers on Monday held a protest in the summer capital, Srinagar, in support of their demands, including release of pending wages and removal of Chief engineer Kashmir PHE.
Scores of casual daily wagers, under the banner of PHE Joint Employee Association and permanent employees of PHE, who supported the demands of daily wagers of the department, assembled in the compound of PHE office on Exchange road in Srinagar and raised their demands.
Holding placards, which read, ‘Regularize our services’, ‘Release our pending wages’, ‘remove C.E PHE’ besides other slogans, the demonstrators threatened to intensify their protest after 26th of this month if their demands were not fulfilled.
The protesting employees accused the Chief Engineer PHE of suppression and said that the Chief Engineer wanted to turn the Daily Wagers and casual labourers into a scapegoat to cover up his incompetence and failure.“By withholding the due salaries of the temporary employees and trapping the oppressed employees in baseless cases, he is trying to provoke the Daily Wagers and Casual Labours to take to the streets so that the real issue that governments attention could be diverted from incompetence of the Chief Engineer.
President of the J&K Casual Labours and Daily Wagers Forum, Sajjad Ahmad Parray said that the daily wagers and casual labours which are working in the different government departments are without wage and the chief engineer of the department is misusing his official position
‘’We are demanding the government to release our pending wages in favour of all the daily wagers across Jammu and Kashmir and remove chief Engineer, who, under a planned conspiracy, violated the Government Order and the orders of the Supreme Court and misused his position to benefit the blue eyed persons’’, he said.
The protesting employees demanded the LG Manoj Sinha to replace such unscrupulous officers to save the PHE department and the poor Daily Wagers and Casual Labours and they demanded to form a high level committee to unveil all the facts and bring them to the notice of the people.
