SAS Nagar, June 29 - Employees who have been working in de-addiction centers and OOAT clinics of Punjab for the last 10 years will go on strike on July 5.
Parminder Singh, the state president of the Punjab Drug De-addiction Employees Union, said that the drug de-addiction employees have been working day and night for 10 years and are supporting the government in making Punjab drug-free.
He said that these employees were recruited through public appointments in a full and transparent manner on contract basis as per Punjab government rules but the previous governments did not give them anything except gratuities. He said that the contract employees of the drug rehabilitation centers had received a ray of hope from the Bhagwant Mann government, but that too seems to be fading.
He said that the employees in many departments in Punjab are working on very low wages and the government is exploiting them. He said that Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had promised to raise the issue of employees in his election manifesto and the government should first solve the problems of old employees instead of recruiting new ones. He said that Delhi and Haryana government have made the salaries of raw employees equal to regular employees and they demand that the same role model should be implemented in Punjab.
Parminder Singh said that in the last two years, the union has had about 20 meetings with the health department and the health minister, which have been inconclusive. Meanwhile, the Union has also contacted Cabinet Ministers Harpal Singh Cheema, Chetan Singh Jora Majra and Dr. Gurpreet Kaur, but the employees have faced disappointment every time. He said that the Chief Minister Bhagwant Singh Mann himself has not held a single meeting with the employees despite giving a written meeting to the union four times and the present government has responded by throwing bullets like the previous governments.
He said that in protest of this, all drug addiction centers across Punjab will be closed on strike on July 5, and the patients will not get medicine. On July 6, with the support of other unions, a protest rally will be held at Jalandhar and the effigy of the government will be blown up.