SMC employees go on two-day strike, demand fulfillment of pending demands

Srinagar, Feb 05: The employees of Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) on Tuesday went on two days strike to press the government to fulfill their long pending demands.

The demands include issuance of formal orders in favour of the class fourth employees, who have been promoted by the Departmental Promotional Committee (DPC) in 2018, besides providing of winter uniforms to the sweepers and disbursement of salaries to the consolidated sweepers from the internal resources.

At present, the consolidated sweepers are being paid from the money, collected from the households.

Chairman, Co-ordination Committee of Municipal Employees (COCMC), Mohammad Maqbool Malik said that they were forced to take the extreme step.

“The demands have not been met from a long time. We met everyone from Commissioner to Mayor. We were assured that our demands would be addressed at an earliest but so far not a single demand has been met,” he said.

Malik said, “we have called the strike for two days, on Wednesday, we will decide, whether to extend it or not.”

“We know that our strike will result in huge inconveniences to the people. We have no other option. We appeal them to bear with us for some time,” he said.

Commissioner, SMC, Peerzada Hafizullah Shah said that they were on the job.

He said that the promotion orders of class fourth employees are withheld as the promotees have not appeared in the written test, adding that once they appear in the written test, qualify it, orders would be issued in their favour.

“As far as the issue of winter uniforms is concerned, we have asked the handloom corporation to prepare them. It is not that they are without uniforms. Hopefully, we would be distributing another set to them in a couple of days,” he said.

Shah said measures would be taken to streamline the salaries of consolidated sweepers.

“The issue is under our consideration. We are on it. Their salaries will be streamlined in a phased manner,” he said.

Earlier also, the employees had gone on strike on January 1.

The strike had resulted in piling up of mounds of stinking and spreading garbage in many areas of Srinagar city.

The strike was called off on January 4 after authorities agreed to fulfill the demands of employees.