By IANS,
Srinagar : Government employees in Jammu and Kashmir who went on a three-day strike beginning Monday have threatened to disrupt essential services if their demand for implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission recommendations was not met immediately.
Work remained paralysed in all state government offices across the state on the first day of the strike.
“We have waited too long. We were assured the implementation of the recommendations by the state governor during his rule in the state. However, because of the assembly elections they couldn’t be implemented,” an employees’ leader told IANS.
“If the state government doesn’t implement it from this month, we will disrupt the essential services that so far we had exempted from the strike,” he said.
“The National Conference-Congress government is playing dilly dallying tactics and they are trying to divide us. But we are united, and we will carry forward our agitation till the recommendations which have already been implemented in almost all the states are implemented here too.”
The state government says it has in principle accepted the employees’ demand, but is hamstrung by shortage of financial resources to implement the recommendations.
“We immediately need Rs.3,800 crore (Rs.38 billion) to square the arrear bill and Rs.1,800 crore (Rs.18 billion) annually. It is a huge amount that we have to manage. We are in talks with the central government for help,” state Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather said.