Govt Employees & Teachers Hold National Convention

Massive March To Parliament On December 7

A national convention of state and central government employees and teachers’ organisations, held in New Delhi on September 24 finalised a series of action programmes to realise their long-pending demands. The convention also called upon the new UPA government to reverse the anti-worker and anti-poor policies of the earlier NDA government and implement pro-worker, pro-poor policies.

The state government employees, teachers and central government employees will be joining a massive march to parliament on December 7, 2004 in New Delhi for submission of a mass petition with about 5 crore signatures in defence of the Right to Strike.

The convention observed that the government employees hoped that with the assumption of office by the Congress-led UPA government - on the basis of the support of the Left from the outside - the government would reverse the earlier anti-worker policies of the NDA government and adopt pro-worker policies and undo the grave injustice done to the employees and workers by the earlier government. But the various decisions of the government since coming to power –the FDI caps issue, the EPF and GPF interest rates issues, small savings interest rates etc. have caused concern to the working class, noted the convention.

The national convention decided to conduct action programmes on the following issues:

• Protection of the Right to Strike of government employees; repeal of British made slavish Government Servants’ Conduct Rules; scrapping arbitrary and most undemocratic articles 311 2(B) and (C) of the Constitution of India which empowers the government to dismiss employees without showing any reason or giving any scope of self-defence.

• Stopping of downsizing, closure, privatisation and corporatisation of government departments, educational institutions; scrapping of retrograde reports of expenditure commission, Ahluwalia committee and Rakesh Mohan committee.

• Stopping of contract and casual appointments in government departments and schools, colleges and universities and rolling back the cuts in economic, pension and other social security benefits and other privileges earned by employees and teachers’ movement.

• Immediate withdrawal of privatisation of pension as envisaged in a new pension scheme replacing the existing statutory pension scheme effective from 1.1.2004.

• To provide jobs to the jobless youth and ensuring the functioning of government offices and educational institutions for the benefit of the people; all vacancies in government departments and educational institutions should be filled up and ban on recruitment should be withdrawn.

• Reservation of 33 per cent for women in legislature

• Restructuring of centre-state financial relations and more devolution of funds to the states.

• A complete stop to communalisation and importing of religious symbols in education and culture.

• Restoring interest rate of GPF and small savings to its earlier rates at minimum 12 per cent.

• Providing adequate Income Tax relief to the low paid employees by restructuring the existing Income tax slabs and rates.

 The national convention has also chalked out state-level preparatory programmes of action to realise the above demands.  (INN)