The agitating union of the Uttarakhand roadways, the Uttaranchal Roadways Karmchari Union (URKU) took back its strike call after an assurance from the State Chief Minister Harish Rawat. The union had declared an indefinite strike from Thursday. After the decision of taking back of strike, the services of roadways returned back to normal on Friday.
On the insistence of state Chief Minister a meeting of top management of Roadways, Transport Department, Chief Secretary and members of URKU was convened on late Thursday night. In the meeting Rawat asked the CS that the orders for departmental contract of all the work-charge workers of roadways should be issued within a time period of one week. The officials were also asked to prepare draft of guidelines for regularisation of these workers and get it placed in the board of Uttarakhand roadways. Seemingly satisfied by the outcome of the meeting the general secretary of URKU, Ashok Choudhary told The Pioneer that the CM has given what the union was demanding. He said that with the departmental contract the task of regularisation of more than 2900 workers of state roadways becomes easy.
Mention-worthily most of these workers are deployed on work charge contract by the agencies like UPNl. These workers were demanding that they should be accorded the status of departmental contract. The issue got flared up when the State cabinet in a recent meeting cleared the proposal of regularising the services of those workers who are working on contract for more than five years. The URKU got agitated when the roadways management claimed that the benefit of regularisation of workers could not be extended to the contractual workers of roadways as they are technically on work-charge and not on departmental contract.
Meanwhile, another major union of roadways, the Uttarakhand Roadways Sanyukt Parishad ( URSP) has decided to intensify its agitation. One of the main demands of this union is that the state government should resume the recruitment process of drivers in which the precondition of being a domiciled resident of state is attached. The general secretary of the union Ram Chandra Raturi said that the URSP is planning to undertake a strike from November 28 on this issue and other demands.