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Dependants of deceased steel plant employees at the jal satyagraha on Monday. Picture by Pankaj Singh
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Bokaro, Feb. 18:Around 100 dependants of deceased Bokaro steel employees launched a jal satyagraha from 10.30am on Monday, going hungry and standing knee-deep in water to demand jobs from the public sector steel major.
The agitators, including 30 women, waded to Surya Sarovar, a pond barely 150m from the BSL administrative building, and stood in the water.
Earlier, protestors held a meeting under the banner of Mrit Ashrit Karmachari Sangh led by their president Babu Ram Manjhi. “We have a single-point demand. All dependants of deceased steel plant employees be given jobs in the company,” Manjhi said.
Outfit’s general secretary Dinesh Manjhi said his father late Surya Manjhi, who worked as a vehicle cleaner in the steel major’s town administration and public health department, died in June 2001. “But no dependent got a job.”
Pratima Devi, widow of Gopal Hazam, a cold rolling mill employee, added her husband died in 1997 leaving behind eight children.
BSL chief of communications Sanjay Tewari said there were three categories. “One is the accidental death of a person on duty. The other case is related to medical termination, where employees are declared medically unfit to work. The third relates to situations where employees die of natural causes, an accident or murder outside the plant. In the third, we have no moral or statutory obligation to give jobs to dependants,” he said.
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