MAJORITY OF CONTRACTUAL EMPLOYEES TO BE REGULARIZED SOON, CABINET SUB COMMITTEE ASSURES EMPLOYEES’ UNIONS
Chandigarh: In a bid to further streamline the process of resolving the issues of Punjab Government employees, the Cabinet Sub-Committee comprising Finance Minister Advocate Harpal Singh Cheema, Employment Generation Minister Mr. Aman Arora, Transport Minister Mr. Laljit Singh Bhullar, Health and Family Welfare Minister Dr. Balbir Singh on Thursday held deliberations with the representatives of various employees’ unions and associations.
During the series of meeting held at Punjab Bhawan here, Drug de-addiction and Rehabilitation Union, Berozgar Multipurpose Health Worker Union, Punjab Roadways Punbus State Transport Workers Union, Overage Berozgar Union, Punjab Pay Scale Bahali Sanjha Front, Punjab-Chandigarh UT Mulazam & Pensioner Front raised their issues and presented their memorandums to the Sub Committee.
Replying to their common issues of regularizing the services of contractual employees working in various departments, Finance Minister Advocate Harpal Singh Cheema said that Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann led Punjab Government has already notified the policy to regularize the services of employees having experience of ten years. He said that this policy would help in regularizing the services of the majority of contractual employees. The case of those being not covered under this policy would be considered sympathetically in the next phase, he added.
The Cabinet Sub-Committee also assured the Unions that the state government has already started working on framing a policy for outsourced employees to ensure that they can also get the benefits like yearly increment in the salary and leaves. The Sub Committee reiterated that it is striving hard to address all the demands and issues of the employees including regularization of their services in a way that could not face any legal hurdle.
Mr Aman Arora said that the previous governments had deliberately opted such dubious policies to regularize the employees during the last years of their tenure which were prone to be challenged in the courts.
Meanwhile, the Health Minister Dr. Balbir Singh assured the representatives of Berozgaar Multipurpose Health Workers Union that the process for filling as many as 200 vacancies of Multipurpose Health Workers is in the pipeline. He asked the representatives of Drug de-addiction & Rehabilitation Union to put some extra efforts to bring out positive results from drug de-addiction and rehabilitation program as the government is already working to improve their work conditions.
Prominent amongst others, Secretary Transport Mr. Dilraj Singh Sandanwalia, Director Employment Generation Ms Deepti Uppal, Director Transport Ms Amandeep Kaur, Director Health & Family Welfare Dr. Adarshpal Kaur and Director Health Services (FW) Dr. Ravinder Pal Kaur were also present in the meeting.