Srinagar: The Union Territory government has set up a high-powered panel led by the Chief Secretary to lay a roadmap for the regularisation of daily wagers, and ad hoc workers in Jammu and Kashmir, said an official order.
Besides the Chief Secretary, the six-member committee of bureaucrats including the Additional Chief Secretary to the Chief Minister has been tasked to examine the regularisation of the employees working as causal, seasonal labourers and other workers. The five administrative secretaries have been drawn from Finance, the General Administration Department, the Planning Development and Monitoring Department and the Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Department.
The committee has been given a six-month time-frame to submit its report and come up a solution to address the long pending issue. The panel has been given the option to include any other member deemed necessary for the exercise. The decision follows the announcement of Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on the floor of the J&K legislative Assembly last week following protest by daily wagers pressing press for regularisation of employment.
Over 60000 daily wagers are engaged in several government departments on a fixed salaries of monthly Rs 9000 in the absence of the Minimum Wages Act. The mandate or Terms of Reference of the committee, according to the order, would be to examine several issues including humanitarian, legal and financial implications.
Previously, the successive governments set up several committees to address the issue but it couldn’t yield any desired results for the employees so far. Employees Joint Action Committee Fayaz Ahmad Shabnam said they expect the recommendations of the committee should be implemented now.
"Otherwise such committees were formed earlier as well but nothing came out of them," he said citing an agreement of employees body with the previous government on regularisation of the employees.
"We understand the financial implications of the decision but we suggest they can regularise these daily wagers employees in a phased manner to address this grave issue," he told ETV Bharat.
