Srinagar: Apni Party president Mohammad Altaf Bukhari on Tuesday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is visiting J&K on April 24, to make an announcement with regard to the regularisation of the daily-wagers within 60 days.
Addressing a news conference, Bukhari said that there are “thousands of daily-wagers who have been struggling to fight for their rights since long”.
“It has been years together since the daily-wagers are taking to the streets to fight for the regularisation. But, they are only getting promises by the successive regimes,” he said.
He said that the Prime Minister, who is visiting J&K on April 24 for the first time since August 05, 2019, “should make an announcement with regard to the regularisation of the daily-wagers within the period of 30-60 days”.
The press conference mainly focused on highlighting the plight of Power Development Department (PDD) daily-wagers who are yet to be regularised.
Bukhari also called for implementation of Minimum Wages Act and said Kashmir is the first UT where the lawmakers are breaking the law by exploiting the daily-wagers and other contractual workers.
Taking a dig at the administration, Bukhari said nearly 1 lakh daily-wagers are yet to be regularised and most of them are about to get retired.
Calling it as unacceptable, he raised issues of daily-wagers working in various departments including PHE, Agriculture, Floriculture, Fisheries, Irrigation and Flood Control, Food and Supplies, Health, Forest, Rehbari Khel (Sports), Wildlife, Horticulture, HDF Command area, Tourism and several other contractual workers from various departments.
Sharing grief over the recent incident in which a lineman died due to electrocution during repair works, he said playing politics on human sufferings is completely sickening. He demanded compensation to the family members of the deceased lineman from Pattan.
He also demanded jobs for the kin of all those dailywagers who died in the line of duty.
Bukhari said if the issue of regularisation of daily-wagers is not solved within 30-60 days, he will join the aggrieved on the roads and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in protest.
Bukhari also raised the issue of Anganwari and Asha workers who have been appointed under National Health Mission and said their plight too needs to be taken into consideration.
