- So why the hesitation in giving Central pays to outsourced employees: Bhargava
Bhopal: Hundreds of temporary, part-time, outsourced employees of MP demonstrated today at Neelam Park in Bhopal demanding minimum salary of Rs. 21,000, similar to Central Government outsourced employees. On this occasion, Provincial Convener of All Department Outsourced Joint Struggle Front Manoj Bhargava accused the government of double standards and said that – ‘Permanent and regular first-second-third and fourth class employees working in various departments and undertakings of the state are getting seventh pay scale similar to the Centre since January 2016, but compared to the Central outsourced employees, outsourced contractual employees of MP are being given half the minimum wages, whereas the burden of all the work of all the establishments of the state is handed over to these outsourced employees. Therefore, in this era of rising inflation, their salary should be doubled from 1 October.’
Bhargava said that ‘It is regrettable that the contract workers of MP are not getting the same minimum wage as the Centre, on the contrary, the contractors are usurping the minimum wage, bonus, EPF, ESIC amount given to these workers every month and threaten to fire these workers if they object. In this case, the contractors and officers collude and often torture and harass the outsourced workers, due to which the outsourced workers are being forced to commit suicide. The recent example of this is the suicide of Ankit Yadav, an electricity outsourced worker in Sehore, a few days ago.
Bhargava has appealed to the Chief Minister that as per the BJP manifesto, he should make these outsourced workers contract workers and get them their salary directly from the department and as long as it is a compulsion to continue the practice of contracting, get the work done through a single manpower agency.’
On this occasion, former ministers Shri Sajjan Singh Verma and Mukesh Nayak supported these demands of the outsource agitators and assured that ‘they will raise the demands of outsource workers in the upcoming assembly session and force the state government. Employee leaders Vasudev Sharma, Prakash Punj, Shivendra Pandey, Ram Dwivedi, Ashish Sisodia, Amit Singh etc. were included in this delegation.
