GTA Asurakchit Karmachari Sangathan disowned - ..... Binoy disowns assn; but to look into demands

SNS, DARJEELING, 4 DECEMBER 2018: Gorkha Janmukti Morcha leader Binoy Tamang today announced that the Garkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) Asurakchit Karmachari Sangathan would not be their frontal organisation from now onwards, while the association of temporary employees of the GTA, on the other hand, decided to function independently.

It may be mentioned here that meembers of the GTAAKS, who number over a thousand had been appointed in different departments of the GTA when Morcha leader Bimal Gurung headed the GTA.The employees are now demanding revival of their work as they have not been getting any remuneration since June last year.

"They have been claiming that they are a frontal organization of the party, but from today onwards they will not remain a frontal organization of ours. It is their decision to keep the organization or to dissolve it, but we had not made them a frontal organization to start with," said Mr Tamang, who is also the GTA board chairman. He spoke after a meeting with the organization members at Lalkothi here.

Explaining what the organization, was Mr. Tamang said, "This organisation had contingent manual workers and did not exist before and was formed after the GTA Board came into existence. They have been working in different departments with them starting to work around the end of 2013, and the person responsible for it was Bimal Gurung. In order to put them in the various departments, an agency called the Kanchanjunga Manpower had been formed through which they were given these jobs. They were put in by Bimal according to his wishes and had not been appointed by the state government or the GTA. The salary for them also did not come from the government of West Bengal with there being no uniform salary. They were given a minimum of Rs 1500 to a maximum of Rs 5,400."

According to Mr Tamang, they were also not given any official engagement or appointment letter by the GTA.

"Till Bimal was there, they were given remuneration from money taken out of the finance here. Funds for all this were used from the GTA's own source of revenue. When I came here and audit was done, we found out that for each one of them, Rs 9,000 had been drawn to pay them but they were getting very less than that. Where was that remaining amount used?" Mr Tamang alleged.

Even though Mr Tamang said that the organization was no longer his party's frontal organization, the GTA has started the process to fulfill their demands "on the basis of humanity."

"We have started their process and have asked each department to see how many they are there. They have been claiming that there are about 2500 workers, but according to our findings, there are 1257 such workers. We cannot even regularize these 1,257 workers and even if we keep them as contingent manual, where will we get the funds to pay them, while the remuneration should also be given uniformly? We had talked about this with the state government and they had asked us to pay them from our own sources of revenue and asked us to give them the papers,- said Mr Tamang.

He added that proper verification will be done by a committee that has been approved by the GTA Board.

In the verification, things like their education qualification, papers, photo all have to be submitted. Some of them will be short listed after that and then we will also see if there is any police case against anyone. Only after all this is done we will put in the GTA rolls,- he said.

On the other hand AKS general secretary Jyotsana Rai, said they have been actively working in the party since its formation in 2007, and "we still love our party"

'Even though our leader has said that it is not a frontal organization anymore, we have decided to function independently. We are also thankfull to the GTA chairman that he has started the process for our work and we hope that it will happen as soon as possible.'

"We are planning a peaceful march on Sunday but all depends if we will get the permission," she added.