Chandigarh, April 30
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) senior leader and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Punjab Assembly, Harpal Singh Cheema, said that Captain Amarinder Singh-led state government was repeatedly cheating lakhs of workers and pensioners by not implementing the report of the 6th Pay Commission. Cheema termed Manpreet Singh Badal as a useless and deceitful Finance Minister and said that a Finance Minister who could not give his due to the government employees should resign immediately. In a statement issued from the party headquarters here on Friday, Harpal Singh Cheema said that about 4 lakh employees and 4 lakh pensioners of Punjab government departments, boards and corporations had been waiting for the financial benefits to be provided by the 6th Pay Commission since 2016. “But like the previous Badal government, the Captain Amarinder Singh-led Congress government has been repeatedly evading the report of the commission,” he added.
Cheema said that the report of the commission which was to come into force from January 1, 2016, has not come into force due to incompetence of the Badal and the Captain governments. He said that the employees of the state were working on the 15 year old recommendations of the 5th Pay Commission, whereas inflation has multiplied during these years as the 5th Pay Commission came to Punjab in January 2006 and now the year 2021 is underway. Cheema said that it was a shame that the government of the richest state of the country had not given the benefits of the 6th pay commission to its employees and pensioners while the central government including many states had given the benefits of the recommendations of the 7th commission.
The LoP further said that Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal had announced during the last assembly session that the report of the 6th Pay Commission would be received on March 31, 2021 and would be implemented in July 2021. “This announcement has proved to be a bundle of lies as the government has so far only increased the dates, not the salaries and allowances of the employees,” said Cheema. He said that the recommendations of the Punjab Pay Commission would not only benefit the employees and pensioners of Punjab but also the Government of Himachal Pradesh and the administration of Chandigarh would provide financial benefits to its employees on the basis of its recommendations. Cheema said that Punjab Boards and Corporations could provide financial benefits to the employees at their level but these agencies were also awaiting the recommendations of the 6th Pay Commission.
He said that thousands of pensioners had passed away in the last 15 years awaiting the benefits of the pay commission’s recommendations. Cheema said that Captain Amarinder Singh and Manpreet Singh Badal had promised in the Congress 2017 election manifesto to give benefits of the 6th pay commission along with making contractual employees permanent and ‘Ghar-Ghar Rozgar’ on government basis, which has not been completed even after four-and-a-half years of the Congress rule. Taking a dig at Captain Amarinder Singh, Cheema said now that the assembly elections were approaching; the Captain government should implement the recommendations of the 6th Pay Commission and provide government jobs to the unemployed youth.
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