CHENNAI: Following talks with three ministers, Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers Organisations and Government Employees Organisation (Jacto-Geo) on Saturday announced that they have decided to postpone their protest. Jacto-Geo members had planned to lay siege to the secretariat on April 11. They decided to postpone the protest after the ministers assured them that their demands would be taken to the notice of Chief Minister MK Stalin and appropriate action will be taken.
Public works minister EV Velu, industries minister Thangam Thenarasu and school education minister Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi held talks with the state coordinators of the organisation for more than 90 minutes. “The representatives of Jacto-Geo also brought to the notice of the ministers the stance of finance minister P Thiaga Rajan against the government employees. This has created tension among the government employees and the government,” said a statement from the organisation.
One of their main demands is to bring legislation in the ongoing assembly session to ensure safety of government employees. “There are several cases of teachers and government employees being attacked by the public. While there is an act prohibiting violence against doctors, we want a similar law to protect all government employees,” said a state co-ordinator of the action council.
Their other demands include returning the old pension scheme, replacing the post of school education commissioner with school education director, providing dearness allowance without delay and resuming the encashment of surrender leave which stopped during the pandemic among others.
“Despite the DMK manifesto promising to implement several of our demands, they are yet to be fulfilled. The finance minister regularly indicates they can’t be done anytime soon through his speeches. Stalin is also keeping mum on the issue. While we have postponed the protest on request of ministers now, we will start to agitate if the demands are not fulfilled soon,” added the state coordinator.