The members of the district unit of State Government Hostels and Residential Schools Contract Workers’ Association staged a dharna in front of the Deputy Commissioner’s Office here on Tuesday urging the government to withdraw its proposal of direct recruitment to Group ‘D’ posts.
Addressing the protesters here, Manjunath S. Mayyadi, president of the association, said that the State government was planning direct recruitment to Group ‘D’ posts in government hostels and residential schools for the second time.
In the previous Assembly session held in Belagavi, the legislators of both the ruling and the opposition parties had opposed direct recruitment to these posts as those who were working in these posts for years on contract basis would lose their jobs.
The legislators had also opposed the condition that the candidates for the posts of cooks, cleanliness staff and guards should have passed Class 10. Owing to this opposition, the government withheld its proposal. However, the government seemed to be getting ready to bring back the same proposal once more. Such a move would affect existing contract workers, who mostly belonged to Dalit, backward classes and minority communities. If one permanent worker was appointed for a government hostel, one contract worker would lose his job, he said.
Hence, the government should give up its choice of direct recruitment, bring in a change in its recruitment rules and regularize the services of the contract workers. Till it does so, it should follow the Supreme Court’s directive of equal pay for equal work for contract workers.
The members of the State unit of the association would stage a protest in Bengaluru on June 13 and later submit a memorandum to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Social Welfare Minister H. Anajaneya on this issue, Mr. Mayyadi said.
Venkatesh Koni, Uday Kundapur, Kaviraj S., Prema, Gajanana, Harish Byndoor, Netravati B., Baby B., Nagaraj, leaders of the association, were present.
