REGULARIZATION OF CASUAL LABOURERS - WINS A LEGAL BATTLE - CHENNAI NEWS
Chennai, Mar 9, 2012(TNN): After waiting for 30 years, close to 150 employees of the postal department will finally become regular employees, thanks to the intervention of the Central Administrative Tribunal ( CAT). A bench of G Shanthappa, judicial member and R Satapathy, administrative member, passed orders on the matter.
The applicants were appointed mazdoors with the department of posts in 1982. While joining, they were assured that their services would be regularised. Based on directions in a Supreme Court judgment, the department introduced a scheme in 1991 which stipulated that all casual labourers who worked for eight hours a day for 240 days every year as on November 29, 1989 would be conferred temporary status.
Those who were granted temporary status and had worked for three consecutive years would be conferred with ‘Group D’ status. These employees – who are now called multi-tasking staff – would be eligible for pension and other service benefits.
When they approached the tribunal in 2010, they were directed to make individual representations to authorities by listing out their grievances. But their claims were rejected mainly on two grounds – that they were overage and that they did not have the qualification.
When their fresh applications came up for hearing, M Ravindran, additional solicitor general who appeared for the Union government, said authorities did not have any objection to regularise their services.
The bench said there “cannot be any hindrance for the absorption of applicants” who have been working for so long. “It has also come to our notice that there are enough vacancies to accommodate the applicants before us,” the bench said.
Authorities were directed to consider regularising these applicants and give age relaxation and training for those who did not possess matriculation skills within three months.
Thousands of Egypt’s Postal workers are continuing a strike over economic and political demands against the government of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf for the second day in a row.
Postal workers in the governorates of Gharbiya, Qena, Ismailiya, Northern Sinai, Meniya, Sharqiya, Beni-Suwaif, El-Fayoum, Luxor and Aswan - which cover geographic districts from one end of the country to the other - have shut down 50% of Egypt's post offices since yesterday. Colleagues in the governorates of Alexandria and Kafr El-Sheikh are set to join the action tomorrow.
Workers are demanding that the government purge the publicly owned postal services of hundreds of that they consider corrupt managers as well as tens of highly paid consultants.
The workers are also demanding a 7% annual pay increase to keep up with inflation and a 200% bonus for meeting annual production goals.
The postal workers strike by was called last Friday by the newly formed Independent Union of Postal Workers.
Union delegates elected a strike committee composed of six rank-and-file representatives who cover various geographic districts in order to negotiate a settlement with government.
In the weeks after the fall of former dictator Mubarak, thousands of postal workers organized several strikes and protests to demand that the new government replace officials tied to the old regime. Workers also began a campaign to build new local and national unions to replace pro-Mubarak formations that they deemed pro-management.
The Egyptian government uses post offices not only to deliver regular mail services but also to distribute pension checks to millions of retirees.
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