‘Permanent status for GTA staff’

SNS, Kolkata, 19 November 2013: A day before the scheduled bipartite meeting between the state government and the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM) at Gorkha Bhavan in Salt Lake tomorrow, the Trinamul Congress trade union wing-affiliated Darjeeling Himalayan Karmachari Sanghatan (DHKS) today demanded that the government should give permanent status to the contractual staff of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA).

A five-member delegation of the DHKS today called on state Home Secretary Basudev Banerjee at Nabanna and served him a memorandum on the issue. According to Mr Binny Sharma, the spokesperson of the Darjeeling Hills TMC unit, Mr Banerjee has assured them of discussing the matter with the Chief Minister for a positive step soon.

“There are about 5,811 contractual staff in the GTA who get a meagre pay of around Rs 6,000 a month. Of them, the state government had on 17 September 2009 issued an order for regularisation of service of 3,472, when they were part of the now dissolved Darjeeling Gorkha Hills Council (DGHC). However, due to the unrest in the Hills, the order was never implemented,” Mr Sharma said.

“With peace returning to the Hills, we now want the government to implement the previous order,” he added.

As regards the remaining 2,339 GTA staff, the workers body has demanded that their salary be hiked and those on the verge of retirement be given a one-time financial assistance of a substantial amount. “There are some technical irregularities involving the appointments of these staff members and, hence, we have asked for the alternate benefits for them in place of regularisation,” Mr Sharma clarified.

Till a few months ago, all GTA staff were with the GJMM, but of late, around 1,400 of them have switched over to the TMC-backed workers’ body.