Non-payment of salaries: GMC mess workers stage protest

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, August 21

The employees of Government Medical College here today staged a protest against the college authorities for non-payment of mess workers’ salaries for the past six months. The employees demanded that the salaries of the mess workers should be released at the earliest.

The coordination committee of the paramedical staff and the health employees, which steered the protest, demanded that the college had failed to disburse salaries without any solid reason. The leader of the committee, Narinder Kumar, said, “It becomes difficult for a person who gets around Rs 3,500 per month to manage his household if the salary is delayed by a few days. The plight of these 100 workers is unimaginable when they have not got salaries for the past six months.”

Another leader of the employees, Prem Chand, said, “The workers had earlier put up a demand for increased wages as per the Minimum Wages Act. The salaries to mess workers in other medical colleges are paid on a par with the minimum wages law, but here, instead of increasing the pay, the payment of salaries has been stopped for six months.”

He said the protest would be intensified if the salaries were not disbursed.

The employees demanded that senior officials of the college must adopt a sympathetic attitude towards the poor workers, as they have been forced to protest only after waiting for six months.

The employees’ leader, Raj Bedi Anand, said, “The workers have been doing their duty regularly despite the fact that they have not got pay for six months. Even a senior official finds it difficult to manage expenses if the salary is not received in time. But these poor workers waited for a long time before taking to the streets, as they do not want to jeopardize their jobs by antagonising officials.”

Meanwhile, the college authorities stated that the salaries to mess workers were paid from a special account to operate which they had not yet received permission from the Finance Department. The authorities stated that the permission to operate the account was renewed every year and they were pursuing the matter with the higher-ups.