Work in various Government departments may be affected adversely by the strike call given by the association of UPNl workers on Tuesday. There are more than 18000 workers who are deployed in various Government departments under the Uttarakhand Purva Sainik Kalyan Nigam limited (UPNl). The UPNl is service provider to the government departments. These workers are demanding that the State Government should change the terms of their service and instead convert them into the contract workers of the department they are working (departmental contract).
The State president of the association of UPNl workers, Bhavesh Jaguri told The Pioneer that the cabinet committee consisting of Ministers Pritam Singh and Navprabhat has invited the association for talks on Monday late evening and if no positive sign emanates out of the discussions then the UPNl workers would go on an indefinite period strike. He said that the emergency services would be exempted from the strike on the first day.
It is worth mentioning here that these workers are on a two hour work boycott since November 25 which has affected the health services the most.
The UPNl workers are infuriated at the fact that many of them were recently asked to leave the jobs despite repeated assurances of state government that no worker would be removed. The association of UPNl workers is blaming the State Government for not keeping its word and misleading the contractual workers. They site recent decision of the State Government to start recruitment from Staff selection commission for the posts in which the contractual UPNl workers are employed as one such misleading act of Government.
The strike of the UPNl workers would affect functioning in the departments like Health, Sales tax, Municipal Corporation, Secretariat, Education and Power and Peyjal Nigam. The patients visiting the Government health centres would bear the maximum brunt of the strike as the large number of UPNl workers are deployed in registration, pathology labs and radiology department of Government hospitals.