Jammu: Police on Friday foiled a protest march by daily-wagers of the Public Health Engineering (PHE) department supporting their demand for regularization and resorted to minor cane charges to prevent them from moving towards Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s residence here.
The daily wagers have called for a 72-hour strike.
Raising slogans like “Omar Abdullah hosh mein aaoo — hosh mein aaoo”, hundreds of daily-wagers under the banner of the PHE Employees Union marched toward the chief minister’s residence.
The daily wagers were protesting against the government’s delay in addressing their regularization and pending wage release.
The police had set up barricades, some of which were crossed by the protesters. This prompted the police to use mild cane charges.
A large number of police personnel prevented the protestors from marching beyond Shaheedi Chowk.
The leaders of the daily wagers criticized the National Conference government for failing to address their long-pending issues of regularization and wage release despite making pre-election promises.
“For decades, many governments have deceived us. This is another deception. They gave us lollypop. The government’s committee is just a delaying tactic. Such lollypops cannot support our families,” a protesting leader told reporters.
Taking a dig at Chief Minister Abdullah, he said the National Conference leader ignores the poor daily wagers but can initiate an increase in salaries for the MLAs and their constituency development fund to Rs 4 crore.
“The MLAs should transfer their salaries to our department’s wage account from which we receive our salaries,” the protesters demanded.
The protests by them in the assembly does not matter to us, they said.
The Jammu and Kashmir government formed a six-member committee on Wednesday to examine issues related to the regularization of daily-wage workers in the Union Territory.
Earlier on Tuesday, the chief minister announced a committee to address the regularization issue of daily-wagers in Jammu and Kashmir and said that a roadmap would be prepared for presentation in the next budget session. (With inputs from PTI)
