B.L Meena

Darjeeling, June 3: The DGHC has proposed an alternative pay packet for the 8,000-odd ad-hoc workers of the council, but the employees’ union has decided to stick to its demand of permanent jobs instead of the existing six-month contracts.

The current contract of the staff ends on June 30.

A source said the alternative arrangement includes paying basic salary and dearness allowance to ad-hoc employees belonging to Groups A, B and C according to the norms of the Bengal government. For Group D employees, the council wants a daily wage of Rs 128.21, the source added.

The ad-hoc workers from Groups B, C and D are currently paid between Rs 2,000 and Rs 3,000. Under the new arrangement, the lowest salary will be more than Rs 2,000, although daily wage (which is what the Group D staff will get) usually follows the no-work-no-pay model.

B.L. Meena, the caretaker administrator of the DGHC, confirmed that the proposal has been sent to the government. “I have written to the hill affairs department on the matter. The state government is looking into it.”

The source said this would be a stop-gap arrangement once the current contracts end because even if the state government agrees to regularise the ad-hoc workers, the process could a take long time.

The association of ad-hoc workers has reacted cautiously to the new proposal. Machendra Subba, the president of the Janmukti Asthai Karmachari Sangathan, said he would not comment without weighing the pros and cons. “Job security is one thing that is uppermost in our mind. We are studying this arrangement, too, but main demand is regularisation of the workers,” he said.

Many of the employees have been working in the council since its inception in 1988. The DGHC had been given the power to appoint permanent Group C and Group D workers provided the state government sanctioned them, but the earlier administrator, Subash Ghisingh, never took steps to regularise the appointments. Instead he reduced the salaries a few years ago.

The ad-hoc employees are now planning to intensify their agitation. “We will meet the DGHC administrator on June 7 and also start a relay hunger strike from that day in front of the Lal Kothi (the council’s administrative headquarters). If our demand for regularisation is not met by June 30, we will think of organising a fast-unto-death,” Subba said.