The labour wing of the State BJP has accused the State Government of neglecting the interests of the people working in the unorganised sector, saying that the private companies affiliated to the State Infrastructure and Industrial Development Corporation of Uttarakhand limited (SIIDCUl) have become centre of employees’ exploitation in Uttarakhand.
There is no policy for protecting the rights of the employees, working in the unorganised sector. More so, even the existing laws were not being implemented rightly. So, the private companies affiliated to SIIDCUls have become hubs of employees’ exploitation in the State, alleged Prakash Harbola, the State president of the BJP’s labour wing.
“Keeping in view of the violation of the rights of employees working in unorganised sector, we are going to serve a memorandum to the officials concerned of the SIIDCUl at Rudrapur on December 9. Similarly, we have also decided to raise the concerns of the employees working in unorganised sector and private companies with the officials concerned of the SIIDCUl, Hardiwar and SIIDCUl, Dehradun on December 10 and December 11 respectively,” added Harbola.
“Our demand is that the companies working with SIIDCUl must issue appointment letters to their employees and minimum wages must be given to the workers as per the labour laws applying to the unorganised sector,” said Harbola, adding that the employees were not even being given their weekly off and they had to work for 12 hours instead of 8 hours in SIIDCUl.
“We demand that such kind of irregularities must be done away with,” further said Harbola. The fact is that as per the State Government’s rule, the industries located in Uttarakhand have to hire 70 per cent manpower from the hill State itself. But this rule was being violated with impunity. So the Wing demanded the State Government to take necessary steps to implement the rule, maintained Harbola.
At the same time, instead of giving contractual jobs to the local contractors, the industrialists were hiring the contractors from other States- again in violation of the Government’s rules. So they have demanded the State Government to ensure that the contractors from Uttarakhand must be given priority, he added.
Keeping in view increasing cases of crime, the Wingh also demanded proper verification of the labourers working in SIIDCUl.The matter of concern is that since proper verification of the employees is not being done the anti-social elements are working in factories by concealing their true identities. The absence of their proper verification keeps on abetting crimes to the woe of the common people, he alleged.