The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today said castigated the Congress government as well as finance minister Manpreet Singh Badal for following an anti-employee policy by denying government employees their legitimate rights and forcing them to disrupt government functioning.Referring to the large scale protest in front of the office of the finance minister yesterday by Punjab Secretariat employees who held bowls and begged Manpreet Badal to give them their due besides threatening to take the same by force if the government remained unmoved by their pleas, former finance minister and SAD leader Parminder Singh Dhindsa said never before had the Secretariat witnessed such scenes. “It seems the government, which has abrogated its responsibility towards farmers, youth and the poor, has now decided to discriminate against government employees also by refusing to give them their due”, the SAD leader said.Mr Dhindsa said the protest also exposed the functioning of the finance minister who had failed to give dearness allowance installments to employees for one and a half years.
He said the finance minister had also failed to implement the recommendations of the sixth pay commission. “It seems the government is deliberately delaying implementing the pay commission and is wasting time in fruitless meetings”. He said this attitude was in stark contrast to the leadership of former chief minister S Parkash Singh Badal who had not only implemented three pay commissions with utmost promptness as chief minister but also oversaw recruitment of more than two lakh employees during his last two stints. The SAD-BJP government also passed an Act to regularize the services of around 35,000 contractual employees who are yet to get regularized under the Congress regime”, he added.The Akali leader said instead of taking any employee friendly step during the last one a half years, the Congress government had burdened them with a professional tax levy of Rs 200 per month. Stating that the SAD was with the government employees, Mr Dhindsa asked the Congress government to immediately release all DA installments due to them besides implementing the sixth pay commission, regularizing contractual employees and reverting to the old pension scheme as desired by them.