PHE divisions, offices locked down as employees demand wages

Srinagar, Sep 27: Pressurizing the government over their demands, the Public Health Engineering Joint Employees Association (PHEJEA), an amalgam of daily wagers, casual labourers and others on Wednesday lockdown all offices in their respective districts to protest against the delay in their wages, which they said are pending from past 21 months.
All the PHE division, offices, sub offices and others were locked down by the employees to press the government over their demands of releasing their wages from past several months.
The employees said that the delay in releasing their wages has led to the immense hardships to thousands of families.
Accusing the government for ignoring their plights, the PHEJEA here have demanded immediate redressal of their grievances.
PHEJEA president, Sajad Ahmad Parray informed Kashmir News Service (KNS) that today’s lock down called to protest against delay in wages from last 21 months.
“It is unfortunate that the government has failed to release the wages of employees from past several months but at the same time is announcing additional one month salary to the government employees who will be taking part in election duty,” he said, adding that the government instead of releasing the wages of PHE employees are leaving them to lurch at large.
Sajad said that the government is pushing their families towards starvation.
He informed that the families of employees will be holding protest on October 02 at Srinagar’s Pratap Park in case the government will fail to take necessary steps.
He said that the employees who are being deprived of their monthly wages will lockdown all the offices across Kashmir region again on October 05 and 06 to demand their withheld wages.
Meanwhile, Secretary Public Health Engineering (PHE), Irrigation and Flood Control (I&FC), Farooq Ahmad Shah on Thursday said that the salaries of PHE daily wagers, casual labourers and others will be released soon.
Talking to Kashmir News Service (KNS), Shah said that the genuine employees will get their salaries soon while as the issue of employees who are not genuine will be looked into.
When asked to define genuine and non genuine employees, the Secretary Public Health Engineering (PHE), Irrigation and Flood Control (I&FC) said that the Chief Engineer will sit and decide who is genuine and who not.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)