हिंदी
Assured to resolve pension restoration and all issues of employees-pensioners on coming to power
Patiala, August 24 2021
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Punjab senior leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP) Harpal Singh Cheema announced that the demand for restoration of old pension scheme for government employees and pensioners will not only be included in the AAP’s election manifesto; rather assures that after coming to power in 2022, it will implement all the legitimate and pending demands, including the restoration of the old pension scheme of the working class, on a priority basis. On Tuesday, Harpal Singh Cheema arrived to attend the state level protest rally organised by CPF Employees Union Punjab for restoration of ‘old pension’ at Patiala.
Cheema said it was the right of an employee to get a government pension on retirement, not any charity. Therefore, the Congress government should immediately restore the old pensions of the employees. Meanwhile, the Aam Aadmi Party MLA from Delhi Ajay Dutt, who had come out in support of the workers’ demands, said that the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi was the first government in the country to restore the old pension scheme.
Addressing the gathering of thousands of employees, Harpal Singh Cheema said, “Employees are the backbone of the government. It is with the help of the employees that the plans of the government come to fruition and the administration runs; but the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government is bent on suppressing the employees. While Captain Amarinder Singh’s government had discontinued the old pension scheme for employees in 2004, it had closed the avenues for getting government jobs by implementing the contracting system.”
Cheema alleged that the Congress government has robbed lakhs of Punjab employees of their rights by implementing the anti-employee recommendations of the 6th Pay Commission and stripped them of their jobs in the name of departmental restructuring. He said that on one hand MLAs, former MLAs, former MPs as MLAs were looting the exchequer by taking various pensions, keeping unnecessary advisors and taking extra allowances. “On the other hand, the government employees who have been in government service for 30 years are struggling to get a pension,” he asserted. Cheema said there were around 1.5 lakh raw, adhoc, contract and outsourcing workers in the state who were working on meager salaries for the last 10-12 years; but the Congress government did not regularize these employees even as per its election promise.
The AAP leader further alleged that instead of giving financial benefits to the employees through the 6th Pay Commission, the Congress government had taken away only 35 types of allowances. Cheema said the Congress government had abolished Transport Allowance, Urban Housing Allowance, Cash Care Allowance, Training Allowance and Family Planning Allowance etc; while the NPAs of doctors, secretariat staff and drivers’ allowances had also been taken away from the basic salary. He was accompanied by party’s state general secretary Harchand Singh Barsat, Employees’ Wing leader Amrik Singh Bangar and Gurmel Singh Sidhu, among others party leaders.
