The employees of JPDCL / JKPTCL (PDD) held strong protest demonstration in the office complex of Chief Engineer at Canal Road here. It was the third day of the ‘Kaam Chhor Hartal’ of the PDD workers. They were demanding regularization of casual labourers and need based workers of the JPDCL/PDD. Earlier, they held strong protest demonstration, followed by day long dharna. Many members of the JPDCL Workers’ Union including its president, Akhil Sharma addressed the gathering. They pointed out that 3169 need based casual labourers were working in the department for the last over 15 years, who are yet to be regularized. Out of them 2707 are getting their salaries and 462 are without NIC clearance and they are being denied their wages. The cases of these pending workers required to be sent to the Finance Department for NIC feeding. Even 99 workers who are in the NIC list, are being denied wages for the unknown reasons. System and Operation wing has also 150 casual labourers, they added. They further alleged that many workers have been denied their wages for the last seven years and their pending wages be cleared without any more delay. They demanded that Government must frame a policy to compensate worker and his family in case he meets with accident during work. They also demanded enhancement of wages from Rs 6750 per month to Rs 18,500 per month of these workers, conduct of DPC at an earliest, implement SRO-381 , frame regularization policy and register 870 casual/ need based workers on NIC portal. Prominent among those who spoke on the occasion included, Akhil Sharma, Vinod Kumar, Nasib, Tarsem, Ajay Kumar, Subhash Kumar, Ashish Verma, Gourav Sharma, Gurmail, Gurtej, Bashir Ahmed, Javed Malik and others.
