Slogans rend air at Dispur Last Gate | 3 Mar, 2017

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, March 2: Dispur Last Gate today wore its usual 'Assembly Session look' – slogan shouting in full throttle in support of various demands by various organizations.

The organizations that staged sit-in demonstrations today are the All Assam 108 Mrityunjoy Employees' Association (AA108MEA), Asom Sikshak Karmachari Aikya Mancha (ASKAM), All Assam Surrenderred ULFA Samiti and the All Assam Minorities Students' Union (AAMSU).

The 108 Mrityunjoy employees say that GVK EMRI, an agency from Hyderabad that has been running the service, has been making them work for 12 hours a day, besides depriving them of all facilities. "When the service was launched, each vehicle of the service had three EMTs and three pilots. Thus each EMT and each pilot have to work for eight hours a day. However, latter an EMT and a pilot were taken away from each of the vehicles. This has made each EMT and each pilot to work for 12 hours a day," AA108MEA president Joydev Chandra Roy said, and added: "The term of GVK EMRI is going to expire in June, 2018. Taking the career of 18,000 youths associated with Mrityunjoy service into account, their jobs should be regularized after the expiry of the term."

The ASKAM has all along been demanding provincialization of posts of teachers and other employees of venture schools established before January 1, 2006 and of schools that have got recognition and approval till date. In its white paper published recently, the Education Department made it crystal clear that the posts of teachers without the requisite RTE/NCTE/UGC norms would be provincialized as tutors. The ASKAM says that such a step is not just. "There shouldn't be any fresh rules for teachers who have been working for 10/15 years without any salary," said ASKAM general secretary Anowar Hussain Choudhury.

The surrendered ULFA members, among other demands, have been demanding their rehabilitation and withdrawal of cases against them. Members of the Krishak Sramik Unyan Parishad (KSUP) were also seen staging their protest sitting along with the members of the surrendered ULFA.  

The members of the AAMSU have been demanding of Dispur to allocate separate funds for the development of minorities in the State. They have other demands as well.