NE MGNREGS employees to launch stir for wage hike

Agartala:  Over 13,000 employees employed in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS)  in northeastern states would launch a stir from next month to regularise their jobs and attain uniformity in their salaries, a leaders said on Monday.
“As first step of the agitation, we would send letters from all the eight northeastern states to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to regularise the jobs of the MGNREGS employees and uniformity in the remunerations,” NEMEA president Joydeep Kar told reporters.
He said: “After sending letters to Prime Minister, e-mail and tweet messages would be send to Modi in support of the demands. On July 15, sit-in-demonstrations would be organised in all the eight northeastern states on the same issue.”
A convention of the ‘North East MGNREGA Employees Association’ (NEMEA) was held here on Sunday to finalise the agitation in support of their demands.
Delegations of MGNREGS employees from all the eight northeastern states took part in the day-long session.
NEMEA’s general secretary Kokil Barua, who also representing MGNREGA employees of Assam, said that the 5,500 employees of the rural job scheme in Assam are not getting their wages for the past 32 months.
“If we protest for non-payment of our wages, the authorities are threatening to sack the employees,” Barua added.
Citing state wise disparity of the wages of the MGNREGS employees, they said that the workers of the scheme in Uttar Pradesh gets Rs.3,943 per month while employees in Assam gets Rs.4,500 per month.
Kar said that of the five categories of MGNREGS employees, the highest remuneration is Rs. 25,000 per month in Mizoram and lowest Rs.3,943 per month in Uttar Pradesh.
“Payment of wages is also very irregular in Meghalaya,” said NEMEA assistant secretary Tinko Momin, who represents the Meghalaya MGNREGS employees.
“Whenever, we asked for parity of wages, regularise our jobs and to provide basic facilities like 20 days’ paid leave, the state authorities ask us to appraoch the central government,” Momin added. (IANS)