Agitated over the state government's excuse of 'financial crunch', the HP Secretariat Services Employees Federation today took up cudgels to demand the release of Dearness Allowance and the due Pay arrears at the earliest, failing which it would resort to ‘mass casual leave’ in protest.
The Employees assembled for the General House in the Secretariat compound here and condemned the ‘double standards’ of the government, which was spending crores of Rupees on repairs of the new houses, offices, cars and allowances of bureaucrats, extensions to the retirees, but was telling the employees that it was in financial stress.
The Federation leaders said the Chief Minister was being misguided by the IAS officers, who do not want the employees of the state government to get their due. They said the Secretariat Services employees were not given due space to even sit and perform their duties, which was a pathetic state of affairs.
President of the Federation, Sanjeev Sharma said the state government was crying hoarse about the financial crunch for giving employees their dues, whereas it has not cut the wasteful expenditure on the luxuries enjoyed by ministers and bureaucrats.
He said wasteful expenditure was being incurred on the repair of the newly constructed buildings, the monthly entertainment (Satkar) allowance of Rs 95,000 given to the ministers and Rs 5000 to the bureaucrats, appointment of advisors, OSDs and monthly telephone allowance of Rs 20,000 to Ministers and Rs 4650 to officers.
He said it was unfortunate that the government, which says it does not have money to give the employees their due, has given administrative approval of Rs 19 crore for the Chief Minister’s office recently. He said it was unfortunate that the so-called cash-strapped government can afford Rs 50 lakh car for the Chief Secretary.
“What kind of financial crunch do they have?” he said.
Sharma criticized the government for appointing 90 Additional Advocate Generals, Deputy Advocate Generals and Assistant Advocate Generals for the first time against 40-45 appointments earlier. “With such a long army, the government is losing all the cases and is made to hire private advocates as Rs 5 lakh per hearing,” he said.
The President of the Federation asked the government to go for some cost-cutting- by going for five day a week, auctioning the luxury cars of officers and starting a Volvo for them ( like Karnataka), slashing the telephone bills to Rs 500 per month and cutting down other unnecessary allowances.
He said if the government doesn’t call the Federation tomorrow to discuss the matter, it would meet for another General House on August 23 in the same compound. “We will not disturb during the ensuing Monsoon Vidhan Sabha session, but will start our fight again from September 10 and then go on mass casual leave to press for our demands of due financial benefits,” he said.
Sharma said the employees unions of some other institutions and departments have also expressed solidarity with them over the phone.
It is pertinent to mention that the employees in the state got furious when the Chief Minister did not announce the release of DA and arrears for them on Independence Day and asked them to wait for the next financial year given the financial crisis.
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