Civic staff descend on Kharar,block NH-21

The blockade was lifted after 20 minutes when Kharar SDM Rajiv Kumar Gupta promised to arrange for the protesting civic employees a meeting with Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in Chandigarh on December 29.

It was around 1 pm that the agitating civic employees,after holding a massive protest rally inside Kharar Municipal Council (MC) office here,marched towards the highway and squatted on the middle of road at Bus Stand Chowk,blocking the movement of vehicular traffic to and fro Chandigarh.

The protesters,under the banner of Punjab Municipal Employees’ Action Committee and led by its convener Kuldeep Kumar,rent the air with anti-government slogans. Around 1.20 pm,the SDM arrived at the scene and after coordinating with CM’s secretariat,he assured the protesters that CM has agreed to meet them and consider their demands sympathetically.

The total of 17 demands of the civic employees include regularisation of contractual employees,stop contractual system,immediate release of 43 months’ wages according to the revised pay commission,service on compassionate ground to next of kin of deceased civic employees,besides fulfillment of already accepted demands on July 4,2008.

As per the action plan,the civic employees had already held similar protests in Phagwara,Hoshiarpur,Amritsar,Pathankot and Moga after launching their statewide protest on December 1.

Due to the protest,all the civic employees,including sanitation staffers here and elsewhere in the state,abstained from work,crippling the working at MC offices as well as cleanliness work across the state.