About 5,500 employees and pensioners of ludhiana's Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) on Wednesday threatened to gherao CM Parkash Singh Badal over the delay in the payment of salary and pension for September.
"We, including teachers and non-teaching staff, have not received salary for the month of September till now," PAU Employees' Union president PS Gill said. Similarly, pensioners have also not got their dues for September, he added.
The employees, who have been protesting under the banner of PAU Employees' Union for the last three days, warned to gherao the CM to protest against the "apathetic" attitude of the State Government towards varsity employees.
Out of the total staff of 5,500, PAU has about 2,800 teachers and non-teachers while the rest are pensioners. Employees' Union pointed out that the monthly budget for the payment of salaries and pension stood at about Rs 25 cr, which had not been disbursed by Punjab Government so far.
PAU V-C Baldev Singh Dhillon said, "The State's Finance Department has assured us to release pay and pension as soon as possible. However, no timeframe has been given."
Not only current dues, employees also claimed that they had not got even the single instalment of pay arrears on account of revision of pay scales despite promised by the State Government several times.
"State Government employees have been given 70% of their pay arrears whereas we have not been disbursed even one instalment of our arrears," claimed Gill. "We were told by Punjab Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa last December that the 40% of pay arrears will be disbursed by March 2013. But till now, no dues were cleared," he said.