Hours before his scheduled meeting with protesting employees’ unions on Thursday, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann refused to meet them, even as a statewide strike brought work across government departments to a grinding halt, causing widespread inconvenience to people.
the protesters struck a defiant note, saying they will decide on the next course of action on Sunday and announced they would burn effigies of the CM on Friday and Saturday While the government said that action would be taken against absentee employees.
State finance minister Harpal Singh Cheema has already made clear that the government doesn’t have funds to release the pending amount in a single tranche. With the assembly polls around the corner, the employees’ anger over DA arrears has given opposition parties a potent issue to target the Mann government. We bluntly refused. “Punjab takes pride in providing the best possible remuneration to its employees.
The widespread strike shuttered routine government operations, suspended outpatient department (OPD) services in state-run hospitals, and disrupted public transport, schools, and civic administrative offices across the state The flashpoint centres on ₹ 20,161 crore pending DA arrears. The Punjab and Haryana high court, acting on a clutch of petitions on August 3, had directed the state government to release the amount within 15 days. The deadline has already expired after which, as per court orders, a 6% per annum interest has to be paid. If the Centre or any state government pays ₹ 36,000 to any of its employees, the Punjab government pays ₹ 50,000 to them,” he added.
Civil secretariat staff association president Sushil Kumar Fauji, who was part of the delegation to meet the CM, said: “We were conveyed by a DIG-rank officer to submit in writing that the protest is being withdrawn and all employees will resume work. This is not the first time that the CM had ditched the government employees; earlier, he and other top officials had also shown direct reluctance to have talks with the employees, he said. “The government has been underestimating the strength of the government employees, who are fighting for genuine demands,” Virk added. Earlier, addressing the newly recruited constable at Jalandhar, Mann said the state government pays highest salary to its employees, referring them as the backbone of the state government.
