Report from Shri RP Bhatt, Joint General Secretary/Divisional Minister, Purvottar Railway Karmachari Sangh, Mechanical Factory Division, Gorakhpur
On the call of NFIR to observe the week from 13 to 18 September as a Protest Week, workers of the Purvottar Railway Karmachari Sangh (PRKS) organized a huge demonstration against monetisation during their lunch break despite the rains. The march was conducted in front of the Chief Factory Manager’s office.
It was jointly led by Joint General Secretary Shri RP Bhatt, Divisional Minister Vijay Pathak, Joint Minister Deepak Chaudhary, Joint Minister Kuldeep Mani Tripathi and Joint Minister Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar.
Joint General Secretary/Divisional Minister Shri RP Bhatt read out the national memorandum and the memorandum of local demands, addressed to the Chairman of the Railway Board, at the demonstration. The national memorandum included the following demands: payment of three pending instalments of dearness allowance for January 2020–January 2021; cancellation of NPS and restoration of old pension; removal of ban on night allowance; ban on railway privatisation, corporatisation and contractualisation and filling up of all vacant posts of railways; and conduction of secret elections for union recognition.
Local demands included the opening of employee grievance redressal centre; completion of all liquidator payments, including PPO, to retired employees; payment of CTG, PLB incentive arrears; promotion to higher vacancies; immediate declaration of 25% results of the selection exam of Group D employees; passing of only 3 persons in Mechanical MCM Junior Engineer; payment of outstanding PCO allowances; and compensation for motorcycles getting stolen from the premises of the Chief Factory Manager’s office as well as provision of security in the future. Both memorandums were handed over to the Deputy CME Works Shri DN Pandey in the absence of the CWM.
PRKS General Secretary Vinod Rai said that the program of continuous dharna and demonstrations will continue till 18 September. It is the job of the union to protect the interests of railway employees. Jaiprakash, Satish Srivastava, Laxminarayan, RD Singh, Amit Gupta, Anunaya Suraj Gupta, Surendra Tiwari, Rajesh Pandey, Ashok Pandey, Sanju Pandey, Ajay Gupta, Rohit Gangesh Prasad, Deepak Pandey, Chandreshwar Upadhyay, Rajesh Jaiswal, Parmatma Singh, Bhagwat Srivastava, Ajay Pandey, Rakesh Srivastava, Anshuman Pathak, Nishant Yadav, Brijpal Singh and a large number of women, including Madhubala, Malini Pandey, Sarita Bina Singh, Savitri Devi, Pinky Lakra and others, were present.