Next meeting on Sep 27
SRINAGAR: Employees in Jammu and Kashmir have deferred their five-day protest plan after the first round of talks with the government over pending issues on Tuesday.
The Joint Coordination Committee, an amalgam of employees unions, has been pressing the government to implement an agreement reached last year over a number of demands.
They include an increase in the retirement age from present 58 years to 60 years, regularisation of daily wagers, casual labourers and contractuals, who have completed seven years in service, and release of pay of employees working without salaries for the past six months.
The JCC and the government will hold another round of talks on September 27.
“The Cabinet Sub Committee headed by Finance Minister assured us that our demands would be positively conceded in the next meeting,” JCC leader Abdul Qayoom Wani told reporters during a press conference in Srinagar.
The five-day protest and strike programme was scheduled to start today. Now the JCC leadership has appealed to employees to resume their normal work and wait for the outcome of the next meeting.
However another news agency, KNS, has quoted a senior minister say saying “the government had never conceded to the demand of an increase in the retirement age”.
“Which agreements they are talking about we have never made a commitment regarding the increase in retirement age. We just said that we will consider it sympathetically.” Taj Mohiuddin, minister for medical education and part of the government committee holding talks with JCC, said.
He added that though the government believed in a reconciliatory approach, “yet it would not in any case succumb to pressure.”
“We can’t be cowed down by their warnings, government is after all a government, you can’t take it for a ride,” he said while reacting to the JCC warning of taking to confrontational rout again if there wasn’t any breakthrough in the next meeting.
“We have accepted their all demands and now only three including Pay anomaly, regularization of casual laborers and two year increase in the retirement age are pending which are under consideration and would require time.”
