Editorial: Regularization process a welcome step
Srinagar: State government has finally initiated concrete steps to regularize daily wagers and it has come as a major relief for thousands of casual and daily wage workers working in various departments.
Having spent years working hard with meager wages often paid after delay of many months and years, these daily wagers have been waiting for this announcement for long.
Officials say that the concerned SRO has already been sent to Law department for approval and is likely to be okayed in next few days.
Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and the state finance minister Dr Haseeb Drabu have already made public announcement to this effect with the Chief Minister taking to twitter to announce that her government would soon regularize the services of sixty thousand daily wagers.
The state cabinet had on October 23 this year accepted the roadmap prepared by the high-level committee headed by the Chief Secretary for absorption, regularization of Casual, Seasonal laborers and Daily Rated Workers to ensure sustainable livelihood to hundreds of such workers engaged over a period of several years.
Although the announcement and the consequent execution is a welcome and long due step, the process leaves us with more questions to answer. Foremost being the fact that the process of identification of such daily wagers that was carried out by the government puts the numbers of such workers at over a lakh.
And the numbers being talked about by the CM and the finance minister remain at sixty. Thus leaving us to think of what happens to other fifty odd thousand. One can only hope that the remaining people are also taken care of.
Another important facet of the whole issue is that it brings to fore the fact that corrupt politico-bureaucratic setup has time and again violated rules to accommodate daily wagers, need based, causal workers for their petty benefits and vote bank politics. Hence the numbers that stare us in the face today.
This is a golden chance for the administration to rectify the mistakes committed in past and ensure that the process of such illegal appointments is put to an end once for all. So that in future we don’t face such a crisis again.
KV Correspondent
