The employees’ union calling off four-day strike that was to commence from Monday is a positive development. The state government and its about half a million employees have now been for a long  on warpath over enchantment of retirement age by two years and bringing it at par with faculty and employees in various universities, professional colleges in the state and state cadre all India Service Officers. It has become a regular feature with the employees to observe pen down strikes and lockouts. The   average loss of the state because of salary only is about Rs 32 Crores per day.   The state seems yet to work out cumulative loss to the state exchequer due to one day’s employees strike. On many occasions, government came very heavily on the striking employees, cane charging and arresting some of them adding to embitterment and stalemate. 
Ending of stalemate augurs well. Now both employees’ leaders and state administration agreeing for a wider consultation on increase in retirement age by two years and government coming out with final decision on the matter by September 30, has given some relief to the people who have been immensely suffering due to strike. The issue of regularizations of daily wagers, consolidated paid employees,   casual and temporary laborers is a long pending issue with the government. The government failing to decide on this issue has been adding to the misery of these meagerly paid employees. It is for the lack of accountability in the administration that the departments have not been maintaining a proper database of this category of employees. Putting departments on notice for providing data about this category of employees is a right decision. However, monitoring it closely, and officers failing to keep the deadline penalized, is required. Two months is a sufficient time for the government to evolve a strategy and chalk out a program for meeting genuine demands of employees. Instead of procrastinating the government needs to revisit its archaic administrative policy and evolve mechanism within services that would prevent employees from coming into streets in future. 

Lastupdate on : Mon, 9 Jul 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Mon, 9 Jul 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Tue, 10 Jul 2012 00:00:00 IST