Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has threatened the State Government employees with dismissal — by application of Central Government laws —should they be found guilty of dereliction of duty and also said that they should be prepared to work even on the holidays and if required all the seven days of a week.
The Chief Minister has been upset with the government employees who have been carrying out a long drawn movement demanding hike in dearness allowances from the present 6 percent to 38 percent.
In virtual meeting with the district administrative officials the Chief Minister reportedly said that if required she would apply the provisions of Fundamental Rules (FR) 56(j)/(l), Rule 48 of Central Civil Services (CCS) Pension Rules, 1972 and send government officials on compulsory retirement.
Already the government had applied the rules in case of 96 officials sending them to compulsory retirement. “If you expect DA on par with the central government officials then you will have to accept the central government laws regarding early retirement for dereliction of duty,” Banerjee reportedly told in the meeting held on Wednesday.
The Chief Minister who also asked the district magistrates to be vigilant in preventing cases of corruption at the panchayat level said that the Government officials would have to be prepared to work all the seven days of the week if required so that the benefits of the Government schemes can be taken to each and every household.
For this the Chief Minister entrusted the officials from the rank of the Principal Secretaries of each departments to Divisional Commissioners, District magistrates and Superintendants of Police who she said would have to supervise the implementation of government projects. All the leaves of the Government employees would be cancelled she reportedly said.
Reacting to Banerjee’s statements Sanket Chakraborty, a leader of the Steering Committee, a state government employees organisation, said: “The chief minister recently said that her government has completed all the work. How can those work be completed if the government employees did not work? Her statement itself is contradictory.”
P Ghosh another leader of the joint committee of the State government employees unions said that “many former governments had tried similar coercive tactics but subsequently ended up not only reinstating the employees but also paying them compensations … so before taking such steps she must think twice.”