Regularised employees reiterate demand for release of salaries

MR AND WC WORKERS CALL GENERAL MEETING FOR 17 AUG IF ISSUE IS NOT RESOLVED EVEN TILL THEN
GANGTOK, 31 July: Continuing their struggle to get their dues, the regularized Muster Roll and Work Charged employees of the Power Department have asked the State government to release their due salaries by 05 August. They have demanded that salaries be released at least to those employees whose documents have been re-assessed.
Over 1,400 recently regularized MR & WC employees in the Power department have not received their salaries for almost 5 months running now. They have expressed extreme difficulties in running their households and meeting other social commitments and inability to access more loans in the context of the non-disbursement of their salaries by the state government.
On the other hand, the government, through the Department of Personnel, is engaged in a re-assessment of the actual numbers of MR/WC employees in the department who are eligible for regularization. While this is going on the affected employees have asked the government to release the salaries of at least those employees whose documents have undergone and cleared re-scrutiny.
It is informed that out of the 1450-odd regularized MR/WC in the department, the Department of Personnel has completed the scrutiny of around 700 employees. “At least the government can release the due payment of salaries of these employees who have been assessed again by the department,” says one of the affected employees.
While the government had directed the DoP to complete the exercise within 1 week the stipulated time frame is over and is likely to spill over into the coming week as well.
Meanwhile, a press release received late this evening informs that executive members of the central and district committees of the All Sikkim Government Work Charged & Muster Roll Association met at 2nd Mile, JN Road here today. The meeting unanimously resolved to call a general meeting of the association on 17 August, if, even by then, nothing was done by the government about the release of denied salaries.
They want the DoP notification putting the regularization process in abeyance to be lifted so that complications holding up their due salaries are removed.
“We are thankful to the Chief Minister for making education free up to college level in the State and hope he will do something similar for us, the concerned suffering WC & MR  employees, and have our pending salaries cleared,” says Pema Doma Bhutia, president of the association.