Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) manifesto committee headed by Rajya Sabha MP Balwinder Singh Bhunder held its third meeting with class C & D government employees and others here at the party headquarters.
In run up to preparation of the manifesto for the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls, the manifesto committee is slated to interact with the representatives of industry, business, farmers’ groups, trade unions and all other stake holders in near future where in they would articulate their aspirations from the next union government. Earlier, the committee had met the farmers groups during its second meeting.
The views expressed at these formal and informal meetings would be incorporated in the party manifesto as the party is of considered opinion that the aspirations of the people provide essential input for the preparation of the manifesto.
The representative of the different employees unions sought that all recruitments to the government jobs should be on merit and regularized and the system of hiring employees on contract or through contractors, ad-hoc or temporary basis should be abandoned for good. These systems have resulted in gross disparities in salaries and allied service conditions for instance adhoc teachers or doctors get even less than one third of the regular teachers /doctors for the same work. Also, all the ad-hoc or temporary employees working for the last three years should be regularized immediately.
Besides, the representative sought that persons engaged in hazardous professions should be provided essential safety kits and in case of death should be compensated with handsome ex-gratia.
The leaders of the Gadaria and Bazigar and other vimukt jatis sought that they should be included in the list of schedule tribes as these have been inadvertently left out because of indifference of previous governments.