NEW DELHI: Lieutenant Governor (L-G) VK Saxena has directed the city government to implement the judicial orders for payment of allowances–HRA and TA– to contractual welfare officers of the Department of Social Welfare like the regular employees, the officials who have been fighting the legal battle for almost a decade, said on Friday.
According to the officials, the L-G expressed anguish that the department which is primarily responsible for the welfare and care of the poorest of poor and the helpless, marginalised sections of society, has exhibited such a “lackadaisical and dilly-dallying attitude” in critical administrative matters.
On the applications filed by the contractual workers in 2014, two CAT orders were passed in 2015 and the appeals of the Departments of Social Welfare and Women and Child Development were dismissed by the Delhi High Court in 2017. The challenge to the HC orders was dismissed by the Supreme Court which also rejected the review petitions by the departments in March last year, officials added.
Citing the apex court’s order, Saxena said he was surprised to note that despite his explicit approval to implement the directions of the tribunal and higher courts concerning equal benefits to contractual welfare officers in May 2023 itself, the department curiously took another eight months to process the matter and it is yet to implement the same, which is completely unreasonable and unjustified. Furthermore, he said the welfare department took no action whatsoever in view of the tribunal’s order in May 2015 and kept it pending inexplicably for several years.