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| Employees’ retirement age issue: Coalition-a divided House | | |
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Apr 3: Even as the state government has successfully managed to bring consensus among different political outfits vis-à-vis sending an all party delegation to the Centre seeking its financial aid for payment of sixth pay commission arrears, the ruling coalition is still a divided House over the employees’ demand of enhancement of retirement age.
If sources are to be believed, the members of ruling coalition partners, National Conference and Congress, who participated in the All Party Meet called by the Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, had expressed different views over the demand of increasing the retirement age from 58 to 60 years. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Jammu State Morcha (JSM), two Jammu based political outfits, had suggested for holding discussions with the real stakeholders i.e employees.
Sources said that though the National Conference (NC) members had opposed the demand of increasing the service period of the employees for two years, the idea was supported by some of the Congress leaders.
“While supporting the demand of the state government employees, the Congress leaders had pleaded that the government should enhance the retirement age of its employees from 58 to 60 years. They had said that the Central government has already extended this benefit fixing the retirement age of its employees upto 60 years. And there should be no disparity vis-à-vis retirement age of employees,” sources informed.
“The Congress leaders had further demanded that the government should either enhance the state government employees’ services for two years or the Central Government employees serving in Jammu and Kashmir be brought at par with state employees i.e curtailment in two years service to avoid disenchantment among the employees,” maintained sources.
Talking to the Early Times, Choudhary Ramzan, senior NC legislator, said, “No consensus was reached out on this sensitive issue as the two major political parties, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party (JKNPP) had not participated in the meeting. We asked that all the merits and demerits should be taken into account prior to take a final decision over it.”
“It was discussed in the meeting that 5000 to 10,000 employees retire from the government services and the same number of unemployed youth also gets overage annually. If the government extends the services of government employees for two more years, it would further aggravate the problem of unemployment,” the NC leader said, adding “As and when the PDP and JKNPP participate in the meeting, the issue would further be discussed and it would be pre-mature to comment on this issue.”
Shamsher Singh Manhas, BJP state president who had headed the party delegation in the meeting, informed, “There was no consensus among the Congress leaders and it was a divided House. While some Congress leaders were supporting the idea, others had categorically rejected it. The NC leaders had also opposed the demand.”
“We had asked the government to hold talks with the real stakeholders instead of reaching out consensus among political parties,” Manhas claimed.
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