Says Transport minister Laljit Bhullar had gone back on AAP promise to regularize contractual employees of Transport dept
Amrtisar, December 18 -Former minister Bikram Singh Majithia today demanded the AAP government immediately reinstate 302 Punjab Roadways Transport Corporation (PRTC) and Punbus employees who had been arbitrarily thrown out of service and blacklisted even as he asserted that Transport minister Laljit Bhullar was going back on his word to regularize the services of contractual employees in the transport department.
Addressing a press conference before joining the dharna organized by the Punbus and PRTC Contract Workers Union, Majithia said Laljit Bhullar had even addressed a protest of the transport employees before the 2022 elections and assured that the AAP government would re-induct all employees whose services had been terminated arbitrarily besides regularizing services of contractual employees. “Instead of doing this, the transport department is throwing out trained employees who have put in ten to fifteen years of service and is hiring new untrained employees through a security agency. This smacks of corruption”, he added.
He said even though chief minister Bhagwant Mann had announced in the State assembly that all contractual employees would be regularized, his government was following an insidious agenda by terminating the services of contractual drivers and conductors receiving a salary of Rs 17,000 to Rs 18,000 per month and hiring new recruits at Rs 9,000 per month. “This shows that the government does not have any agenda of regularizing contractual employees but has made a plan to do away with their services altogether”.
The SAD leader also asserted that the AAP government was playing with the lives of passengers by hiring untrained recruits and doing away with the services of trained employees. He announced that the SAD would assist the Contract Workers Union in not allowing new drivers and conductors to join their duties. “We will also confront Laljit Bhullar and ask him why he was destroying families of contractual employees and why he is not paying pending dues of employees”.
Meanwhile the Contract Workers Union thanked Majithia for extending support to their cause. Union president Heera Singh said contractual employees had been promised a five per cent annual increase in their salary but even this commitment had not been kept by the AAP government.
