BHUBANESWAR: Braving heavy rains thousands of contractual employees staged a day-long protest against Odisha Government’s contractual employment policy at Mahatma Gandhi Marg here on Sunday.
Holding umbrellas, contractual employees working in over 40 government departments across the State joined the protest seeking salary on the basis of ‘equal pay for equal work’ and complete abolition of contractual appointment rules.
Thousands of teachers along with welfare extension officers and other employees engaged on a contractual basis in the State gathered here to protest in the rain from dawn to dusk. The members who gathered under the banner of the Odisha Government Contractual Employees Association said they have been protesting over the matter for years. However, their demand to scrap the contractual appointment rules is not being heard.
Besides, there are other discrepancies in the government policy for the regularisation of contractual employees, they said.“After our continuous protest, the State government in some cases, especially in the recruitment of teachers changed the contractual appointment to initial appointees with raised salaries. However, the norm for their regularisation remained the same for six years,” said Bijay Malla president of the association.
This apart, there is no norm for inclusion of these six years in the regular job period and the service period of the contractual employees is counted from the day of their regularisation. This causes huge problems in getting promotions, Malla said.
Nirakar Sahu, a contractual teacher, said the exclusion of six years of contractual work from the service period has increased the duration of promotion for them to 16 years as the minimum period of service to get a promotion is 10 years. “This also means remuneration structure of the employees having served six years as contractual employees will be revised after a gap of 16 years, which is totally unacceptable,” he rued.
A delegation of the association on Sunday met Additional Chief Secretary Pradipta Mohapatra. The delegation will hold another meeting with the top government officials on Monday.
“We will intensify our protest if our demands are not met,” warned another member of the association. Sources said over 10,000 employees staged a protest, as the association members said the protest was peaceful and no road blockade or disruption to traffic in the city was caused during their protest.