Employees and pensioners from across Faridkot district staged a protest outside the residence of Punjab Assembly Speaker Kultar Singh Sandhwan in his native village Sandhwan on Sunday, raising slogans in support of their long-pending demands.
Protest leaders warn of state-level agitation
During the demonstration, the committee leading the protest announced that if the demands of employees and pensioners were not met soon, a state-level protest would be held in Chandigarh against the Punjab Government on July 17.
Addressing the gathering, leaders of various employee and pensioner organisations alleged that the Aam Aadmi Party had come to power in the 2022 Assembly elections after making big promises to employees and pensioners, but, despite four and a half years having passed, the government had failed to fulfil any of its major demands.
Existing benefits curtailed, say protesters
They alleged that several existing benefits had also been curtailed since the party’s leaders assumed office. The coordination committee demanded the release of the pending instalment of dearness allowance (DA), immediate payment of arrears of previous DA instalments, restoration of the Old Pension Scheme, regularisation of contractual employees, and the withdrawal of what they termed anti-employee notifications, besides other pending demands.
They strongly criticised the state government's attitude towards the workforce.
Union leaders criticise AAP's unfulfilled promises
Gurnam Singh Virk, state president of the DC Office Employees Union, and Harpreet Singh, a leader of PowerCom’s Technical Services Union, said the government had been ignoring the demands of employees and pensioners for a long time. They said, before coming to power, the AAP had claimed that no one would need to hold protests or ‘dharnas’ once its government was formed, a claim they said had proved completely false.
Memorandum to be pasted if Speaker does not appear
Protest leaders added that, if the Speaker did not come out of his house to receive their memorandum of demands, they would paste it outside his residence to register their protest.
