SHILLONG: The striking Meghalaya Emergency Management and Research Institute Workers’ Union (MEMRIWU) has decided to up the ante by going on a hunger strike from October 29 to put pressure on the state government to fulfill its long-pending demands even as the 108 ambulance service has remained paralysed for close to a month.
The president of the union, Roipar Kharrassai, on Friday said that they have the right to agitate while adding that they started their agitation from 2018, but the management of GVK EMRI did not call them for discussion even once.
Informing that their ongoing strike started on September 30, he accused the state government of delaying the process of issuing closure notice to the firm while the people in the state are suffering .
“Why is the government giving time again and again to the management? We strongly oppose this as the government does not seem to understand the problems of the citizens,” he said.
Opposing Health Minister AL Hek’s stand that the government would invite another firm to run the operations if the GVK fails to resume the service, he added that the union would not accept the idea of handing over the services to another firm.
“If the services are handed over to another company from outside, we will continue to face the same problem,” he said while also opposing the statement of Hek that the government is concerned only with the management and not directly with the employees.
He said that the union strongly opposes the statement as they have given their best service to the people of the state and the government cannot throw them out.
“We are working for 10 years and some of us are over-aged… where will we go for another job,” he said.