Employees of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) Dehradun and its eight research institutes from across India staged a protest at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and submitted a memorandum through the administration to the Prime Minister and Union Finance Minister seeking measures for meeting their demands pending since 1996.
According to the ICFRE Tehnical Staff Association (TSA) secretary CM Sharma, since 1996 the council employees have been seeking redressal of pay anomaly, non-implementation of cabinet note and technical services issues without a proactive response from the council or the ministries concerned.
“The ICFRE was declared an autonomous council under the Ministry of Environment and Forests through a cabinet note dating back to 1990 with a mandate to meet the research and development needs of the forestry and environment sectors of India.
During 1991 the Cabinet through the aforementioned cabinet note decided to create Forestry Council analogous to Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) or Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) by giving functional autonomy to ICFRE.
The bureaucrats registered the council under Societies Registration Act 1860 but forgot to establish law of Governance analogous to ICAR or CSIR, whereas, the technical/research employees of Wildlife Institute of India (WII) and Indian Plywood Industrial Research and Training Institute (IPIRTI)- autonomous institutes under the administrative control of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change follow CSIR service rules.
In the case of technical/research employees of the ICFRE, Ministry of Finance has deliberately denied similar pay scales due since 1996, deliberately imposing objections for rejecting the matter every time and this has forced employees to protest in the national capital for the first time.
This situation has persisted for 23 years with non-compliance of cabinet decision and affected the research output of ICFRE while denying legitimate service rights of thousands of its employees,” he said.
The memorandum of demands addressed to the PM and Finance Minister seeks implementation of the cabinet note in true letter and spirit, technical services analogous to WII, IPIRTI or as per CSIR due since 2000 and replacement of pay scales since 1996 according to fifth and sixth Central Pay Commission recommendation.
Apart from ICFRE employees, the employees of Forest Research Institute (FRI) Dehradun, Centre for Social Forestry and Eco-Rehabilitation, Allahabad, Arid Forest Research Institute, Jodhpur, Forest Research Centre, Hyderabad, Centre for Forestry Research and Human Resource Development, Chhindwara, Himalayan Forest Research Institute, Shimla, Institute of Forest Genetic and Tree Breeding, Coimbatore, Institute of Forest Productivity, Ranchi, Institute of Wood Science and Technology, Bangalore, Rain Forest Research Institute, Jorhat, and Tropical Forest Research Institute, Jabalpur also participated in the protest at Jantar Mantar.