Strike by J-K PHE daily wage workers enters 11th day, CPI(M) urges LG to intervene

On the 11th day of strike called by casual and daily wage workers of the public health engineering (PHE) department over various demands, CPI(M) leader Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami on Monday urged the Jammu and Kashmir administration to resolve the issue immediately.

The casual labourers and daily wage workers have been on strike in Jammu since February 7 demanding release of their pending wages, regularisation of jobs, filling up of vacant posts, repair and maintenance of faulty pumping houses and water stations and basic facilities at water stations for the staff among others.

While assuring full support to the agitators, Tarigami said, "I urge Lieutenant Governor G S Murmu to look into issues pertaining to regularisation and release of wages to daily rated workers because their strike has impacted utility services leading to drinking water crisis especially in most parts of Jammu and Srinagar cities," Tarigami said.

"The administration must talk to the representatives of the PHE workers and try to figure out a reasonable solution to their issues urgently," he said, adding they have been working sincerely for the department for the past many years, but "unfortunately they have been neglected".

Hitting out the administration's "lackadaisical" approach, he alleged that this was the reason for the present crisis as successive governments always made deceptive commitments to buy time and avoid the crisis.

"It is apathetic on the part of the administration that instead of holding parleys with the workers on strike, it adopts coercive methods to avoid the crisis," Tarigami said.

The CPI(M) leader said that any problem concerning employees of important departments which is kept unresolved badly affects the output and the performance of the government.

The administration must understand the difficulties faced by these workers who have no money to pay their children's school fees or to manage their day-to-day family affairs, Tarigami said.