Thousands of employees of local urban bodies throughout State remained on strike for the second day on Tuesday in support of their 21-point charter of demands affecting work badly in the offices of municipal corporation, municipalities and Nagar Panchayats.
During the strike, municipal employees staged demonstration/ protest at their respective headquarters and warned that if their demands are not fulfilled they would proceed of indefinite strike from July 18. Main demand of the striking employees is payment of arrears of the 6th pay Commission for the period of January 1, 2006 and April 31, 2011 and promotion.
Talking to media persons, employees leaders Suresh Tiwari, Arun Dubey, Surendra Dubey and Ajay Verma alleged that while the state government is paying Sixth Pay Commission benefits to all the Government and semi government department employees as also has paid arrears to them, only employees of the local self Government (Urban bodies) have been deprived of arrears. Besides, municipal employees are also not given promotion for a long time.
While the Government is not providing land to houseless employees and denying any exemption in tax, daily wagers are making rounds of offices for regularisation of their services for years, they claimed.
The employees leaders said that they had observed a day long pen-down strike of Monday and took mass leave on Tuesday and again would take mass leave on Wednesday in support of their demands and if their demands are not accepted then they would proceed on indefinite strike from July 18.
Thought, from Monday to Wednesday, essential services have been exempted from the strike, during the indefinite strike from July 18 all services will be stopped, they warned. Notably, as the arrears of 65 months of sixth pay package, State Government owes to pay Rs 300 crore to municipal employees including payment of Rs 50 crore to 2000 employees of Raipur Municipal Corporation alone.