The long-pending issue of regularisation of 63,000 daily wage, casual and need-based workers seems to be getting out of control as the workers have threatened to stop water supply to people.
They have given a deadline till the end of the ongoing autumn session of the legislature, failing which they will take the extreme step of snapping water supply.
This threat has already given a jolt to the Jammu and Kashmir Government, which has again gone in for a time-consuming process and asked leaders of their association to discuss the matter with the government on October 8.
“We had a meeting with the Chief Engineer of the Public Health Engineering Department yesterday. He said the government wanted to hear our grievances and what we actually wanted,” said Tanvir Hussain, president of the daily wage, casual and need-based workers’ association.
“The meeting is scheduled for October 8. We will not budge under any pressure tactics of the state government. We want regularisation of services and payment of pending salaries for the past 36 months,” he added.
More than 63,000 daily wage, casual and need-based workers had been working in various departments of the state government for many years.
They had been deprived of regularisation and successive governments had only given assurances to them. Most of the workers were in the PHE Department and had been managing field work.