Around seventy percent of the tens of thousands of daily-wage workers of various government departments fall short of the ten-year service length criterion fixed to qualify them as permanent employees, despite having worked for longer than that period. This turns out so because the authorities are not calculating the service period for which the wage labourers were not paid though they worked for that period.
In December 2017, the J&K government started a processto regularise services of those daily-wage workers who had served for ten yearsor more.
But, the specific criterion of not counting periods ofservice for which payments were withheld or never released by the governmenthas angered a majority of the 61000 daily wage-labourers who have put in tenyears or longer. According to them this is a “wrong” criterion which beingadopted for their regularisation.
The 2017 government decision for permanaent jobs to thedaily-wage workers was taken after a two-decade long “struggle” by them for thedemand.
“We are paid our earned wages on the occasion of festivalslike Eid, Diwali and Holi. Out of twelve months in a year, we are often paidrenumerations for just five to eight months, that too when we take streets,”said Sajad Ahmad Parray, president of the casual and daily wagers joint forum –an amalgam of various daily-rated workers’ associations.
A government committee constituted under SRO-520, headed byprincipal secretary finance department examines regular engagement ofdaily-rated workers and determines eligibility in each case.
“Seventy percent daily-rated workers are falling short oflength in service as the empowered committee is not considering the months aslength of our service for which authorities didn’t pay us our earned wages,”said Parray.
He rued the criterion saying it was sheer injustice todisqualify wage-workers even after having spent 15 years in service of thegovernment departments that now take into account only “wages drawn period”than the entire official attendance.
This despite the concerned officials and departmentstestifying in writing that particular wage workers have been serving from tenyears or longer, and that wages were not paid or released for specific periodsthat should count as service.
In 2018, the daily-rated workers demanded the governmentrelease unpaid wages during their engagement of 18 years.
“However, the government promised us to expedite ourregularisation process and convinced us to not seek withheld wages of past 18years. We agreed as government assured that it will be counted as workingperiod,” Parray said.
The SRO-520 draws up the eligibility criteria clearly.
“CSLW (casual-daily rated worker) should have completed tenyears of continuous service and must be working in department as on date,” it says, without mentioning anything like”wages drawn period” for deciding eligibility in individual cases.
Principal secretary finance could not be reached forcomments.
SRO-520 is to benefit nine categories of appointees who areentitled to monthly remuneration from Rs 10000 to Rs 24000, depending on theirterm of service.
The cut-off date for regularisation is 17 March 2015.