All Jammu and Kashmir Public Health and Engineering (PHE) land donors association on Saturday held a protest demonstration here in press enclave Srinagar against the department for not regularizing their services.
Scores of protesters assembled in the press enclave and shouted slogans against the department .The protesters said that the government had promised them jobs instead of compensation decades ago when their land was acquired for various PHE projects.
“We have time and again requested government to fulfill their promise that they made during the land acquisition, but they have always failed us. We are left with no choice but to come out on the roads,” said Bashir Ahmad Yatoo, the association president.
“The administration after taking our land decades ago engaged only few hundred among us and that too as need based workers though we were promised permanent jobs,” he said. “Sometimes they tell us that we will be engaged as per SRO-520 which means we have to wait for one more decade for regularization”.
The protesting land donors who have been engaged as need based workers in PHE said that they have not received any wages for the last 19 months. “If our demands are not fulfilled in next eight days, we will lock down all the offices of PHE,” they said.