STATE TIMES NEWS
NEW DELHI: Agitated over the exploitation of unemployed and underemployed youth in J&K, scores of JKNPP activists on Monday led by Harsh Dev Singh, Chairman JKNPP and Yash Pal Kundal State President Young Panthers staged a massive protest seeking enhancement of wages and regularization of their services at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi today.
Alleging the State government failing to address the grievances of the suffering youth in the State, Harsh revealed the miserable plight of over 62,000 DRW’s and casual workers engaged in PHE, PWD, M&RE, I&FC, Tourism, Health, Agriculture, Forest and other departments had been languishing in open for several months demanding release of long-pending wages for more than two years, enhancement of salaries and regularization of their services but the State Government had paid no heed to their sufferings.
He said that the prevalent unemployment and underemployment were the root cause of the embitterment among the youth who were pushed towards starvation and many a times baton charged by the police in the so called regime of ‘Achey Din’ as proclaimed by the
BJP in particular. Similarly lower rung employees like NRHM/ Asha workers, Safaikaramcharis, Anganwari workers etc were also facing the wrath of Government’s apathy.
Citing the exploitation of educated youth of the State as worst form of human rights violation, Singh said that the highly qualified educated unemployed youth in the State were treated like mere expendables.
He added that seething anger among the youth could explode any moment like a catastrophe and cause irreparable damages. He maintained that the College, School and Polytechnic lecturers engaged on contract / academic arrangement basis and who included PhDs, M Phils, Double post graduates etc. were being paid Rs. 7,000 per month in Higher Secondary schools and Polytechnics where as Rs. 8,000/- in colleges which had not been revised for the last more than 12 years. He said that they were oppressed like bonded labourers whose honorarium was grossly meager in proportion to the quantum of work assigned to them.
He reiterated his demand of enhancement in the honorarium of all such the contractual/ academic arrangement lecturers besides formation of policy for regularization of their services.
Prominent among those who led the protest included Paramjeet Singh Marshall, Gagan Pratap Singh, Shyam Gorka, Parshotam Parihar, Balbir Singh , Arun Khajuria, Mohinder Singh, Sudarshan Rana, Nitin, Udhayveer, Rajiv Jolly Khosla, Surjit Guleria, Anil Sharma, Sanjay Singh and Swaran Yadav.
