SHILLONG: The youth wing of the Khun Hynniewtrep National Awakening Movement (KHNAM) shot off a letter to the state chief secretary complaining against the attempt of Meghalaya Energy Corporation Limited (MeECL) to engage casual employees on contractual basis for a period of one year. On July 27, MeECL notified that all casual workers of the corporation and its subsidiary company “are henceforth be engaged on a contractual basis for a period of one year, by duly signing the contract prepared by the corporation between the employee, the employer(s)”.
KHNAM youth wing president Thomas Passah objected to MeECL’s move to engage contractual workers asserting that it needs to be stopped while pointing out that MeECL violated the Government of Meghalaya office Memorandum dated April 18, 1989, which has instructed that appointment on contract has to be for specific time-bound schemes or programmes or for obtaining technical manpower from outside the state to temporarily tide over the requirement till suitable local personnel are available.
According to Passah, there is a clear notification from the government of Meghalaya dated April 18,1989, that all proposals for appointment on contract service are submitted to the Cabinet for its approval after having obtained the approval of the Personnel and the Finance departments.
“Now the corporation is forcing these employees to convert them to contractual employee and to do away with the casual employee. This is a clear attempt of suppression of rights. It is seen that with trends like this, if this contract is allowed to be completed, we could sadly say that MeECL will not have any employee but rather slaves working in the Corporation,” he added.
Again, he pointed out that as per the contract agreement, the Corporation has also not followed or incorporated the “Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act 2017 which came into force on April 01, 2017. Passah also asserted that the verdict of the Supreme Court of India for implantation of “Equal Pay for Equal Work” has not been made applicable to the employee of the Corporation.
He maintained that MeECL and its subsidiary company has a large number of employees working on a temporary basis for a period of 10-20 years without any security of employment, which given them and their family an uncertainty for future. “The rights of these employees need to be protected and it is the government’s duty and responsibility to ensure that we have employees and not slaves working to build our state,” he added.
