Patna, June 8: Patna Municipal Corporation (PMC) employees today decided to withdraw their strike call after senior officials of the civic body agreed to fulfil some of their key demands.

The employees, under the banner of PMC staff union, had earlier announced that they would go on a three-day strike starting June 16, threatening to bring the civic works to a complete standstill. A recent meeting between union leaders and PMC officials, however, is said to have thawed the ice, as the authorities agreed to most of the demands and the leaders decided to withdraw the strike call.

“Our earlier plan was to completely stall operations in PMC. However, after the officials relented to our demands. So we have decided to go back on the issue. We just hope that officials deliver on their promises in time,” said Chandra Prakash Singh, president, Indian National Trade Union Congress (Intuc) that represents majority of PMC employees.

He added: “Our main demands included 10 per cent hike in dearness allowance for about 3,000 employees and assured career promotion (ACP) of about 1,700 employees who had been left behind. The PMC Corporation Board recently approved the hike in DA and senior officials have promised that all employees will get ACP benefits by end-June. Hence, we have decided to withdraw the strike call.”

“Some employees have been availing of the ACP benefits for long, but many others were not given the promotion because of the casual attitude of some officials,” Singh said.

He said the two parties had not reached any consensus on the issue of regularisation of daily wage employees.