MGNREGA employees threaten Govt of indefinite strike over job regularization

Dhanbad: Rattled by broken promises of the state government, Jharkhand State MGNREGA Employees Association has served an ultimatum to either call for a talk on regularisation matters by June 25 or face an indefinite strike.

After a meeting here on Sunday evening  Association leaders sent a notice to Chief Minister Champai Soren saying that if the government does not call MGNREGA employees representative for talks till June  25, they would proceed even on indefinite strike.

The MGNREGA leaders charge that during the 2019 assembly elections, Hemant Soren had promised to regularize the jobs of MGNREGA employees within 3 months if his party formed the government.

“Now the government is going to complete 5 years but he (Hemant Soren) did not realise the promise. So, we have served an ultimatum to his successor Chief Minister Champai Soren,” said an MGNREGA leader after the meeting.

The MGNREGA employees said if the government has technical problems in regularising jobs, it should pay Grade Pay at par with contractual employees of the secretariat till Service Terms Manuel is formed.

Even Gramin Rojgar Sevak should be paid a minimum honorarium of Rs 26,500. At present Rojgar Sevak is paid Rs 12,000 only.

“MGNREGA employees have been working on honorarium for the last 18-19  years in the hope of getting regularised one day. But now their patience has run out. Babulal Marandi, Arjun Munda,  Raghubar Das and Hemant Soren all chief ministers have cheated employees in the name of regularizing the job. So, we have asked the present chief minister to call us to talk on job regularization till June 25,” said Mukesh Ram, MGNREGA  employees leader.

At present  MGNREGA employees are holding agitations in all 24 districts in support of their demand but it would be launched at the state level after June 25.

Association’s senior leaders, former state president Anirudh Pandey, district president  Yasin Ansari, former district president Mukesh Ram, Nishan Kumar, Neeraj Singh, Sanjiv Kumar, Anil Mishra, Santosh  Lodha were present at the meeting.