The Aam Aadmi Party will regularise contractual government employees wherever it forms the government, party national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said on Saturday.
“Wherever AAP forms the government, we are in favour of regularising contractual employees and we will regularise them and give them their rights,” Mr. Kejriwal said in a video statement, referring to a recent decision by the Bhagwant Mann-led AAP government in Punjab to regularise 8,736 teachers.
The AAP chief termed the system of contractual employment “exploitation” and “harassment” and said that it should end and “only permanent employees should be there in the government”.
‘Vicious pattern’
He said that there is a pattern across the country of hiring people on temporary or ad hoc basis and urged the Central government and other State governments to regularise their temporary employees.
“These people promote a notion that permanent workers don’t live up to their duties – this is completely incorrect. We have proven the mettle of permanent workers in Delhi; permanent teachers and doctors in Delhi have been at the helm of our education and healthcare revolution,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
“Several State governments and the Central government are systematically destroying government jobs one after the other. There is a vicious pattern in the country to end full-time government jobs and to replace them with contractual employees,” he said.
He said that a large number of permanent government jobs are kept vacant and instead, employees are hired on a temporary basis. “The time to end this exploitation has come. The wave which has emerged out of Punjab will spread in the entire country,” he said.
Delhi teachers
Reacting to Mr. Kejriwal’s announcement, the BJP questioned why his government didn’t increase teachers’ salaries in recent years. Delhi BJP president Adesh Gupta said the CM’s announcement was similar to AAP’s poll promise of regularising 15,000 teachers in the Capital, a promise that hasn’t been delivered yet.
“It is very shameful that Delhi is the only place in the country where teachers work as daily wagers. Not only this, their salary hasn’t increased in six years,” he said.
“The All India Guest Teachers Association itself has accused the Kejriwal government of refusing to confirm 22,000 teachers despite promising to,” Mr. Gupta said.
In his video statement, Mr. Kejriwal said the Delhi government has been trying to make guest teachers permanent and even introduced a Bill in the Assembly on it, but the Central government refused to approve it.
