Srinagar: Sep 14: The indefinite strike of Settlement Assistants and Prism Man working in Revenue Department entered third day on Wednesday. They observe strike for fulfillment of their ‘long pending’ demands including salary hike.
 At least 200 employees have been observing sit-in protest at Settlement Office Bemina since Monday where they raised slogans to mark their protest against the official delay in amending their salary grade. However they alleged they were being expelled out of the office premises by the higher officials. “The Settlement Officer Kashmir ordered our expulsion and now we are protesting on road”, they said.
 “The government had failed to address our problems by not making amendments in our salary grade from the last ten years. So we took this step of observing indefinite strike from today,” the president All J&K E.T.S Settlement Assistants and Prism Man Association said.
 The Settlement Assistants, who have been working in the settlement operation for more than ten years, said they gained sufficient experience of land surveying through Electronic Total Station (ETS) machines. The surveying through ETS is the job of regular employees (Patwaris and Girdawars). “But due to our experience in the field, the department has assigned the job of Surveyors to us. However, the salary was fixed at Rs 2000 per month”, the aggrieved assistants said.
 According to them almost 200 prism men were made Patwaris prior to 2001. “But after that the trend was stopped.”
 “We face hardships as most of us are posted in far flung areas where we have to bear the boarding and lodging charges at our own. The department has pushed us to wall,” they complained. “In fact we have been delivering the job of Patwaris from operating ETS to preparing field map on very less amount.”
 They said the field officers under the surveillance (Surveyor and settlement Patwaris and Girdawars) were getting 20 percent settlement allowance of their basic pay for the same kind of job.
 In this regard, the assistants said, many communications were sent to Settlement Commissioner who put forward the recommendations of salary hike to Financial Commissioner Revenue. “The salary/wages may be enhanced from Rs 70 to Rs 200 per day on the analogy of other daily rated earners whose wages have been increased recently to Rs 110 per day in pursuance of a Cabinet Decision”, the letter read.
 In response to the letter, the Financial Commissioner Revenue wrote, on Dec 12, 2009, wrote to the Jammu and Kashmir Revenue Secretary about the recommendations and asked him to treat the matter urgent.
 However, the aggrieved candidates went from pillar to post since then, but nothing happened.  “We have time and again appealed to the higher authorities to fulfill our demands of salary hike and regularization of our services, but there was hardly any progress”, they said.
 They also complained the department didn’t send many of them to training. “Many assistants among us didn’t receive any training due to which our regularization is hit”, they said

Lastupdate on : Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:30:00 GMT
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