Thousands of Gujarat government workers, including teachers, participated in a ‘mass casual leave’ protest on Saturday, calling for the reinstatement of the previous pension plan (OPS). On Friday, the umbrella union bodies announced that they were ending the uproar since the state government had granted most of their demands. However, the district-level unions asserted that the government had ignored their primary demand for OPS.
‘OPS was our main demand, and the state administration did not meet our demands on Friday. Since every state employee is impacted by this problem, they have decided to join today’s mass CL agitation’, said Mahesh Mori, the Saurashtra region’s Rashtriya Samyukt Morcha convenor. The Bhavnagar district alone had over 7,000 government teachers on leave on Saturday, he claimed. Since some time, protests against the state’s return of the OPS have been organised by unions that represent teachers, panchayat health workers, and revenue officials.
Many angry workers in Gandhinagar staged a rally on the Old Sachivalaya campus and took the day off of work. ‘Our union leaders had put an end to the uproar by claiming that all of our requests had been met. However, we are still in strong demand for OPS. Although the majority of us began our employment after 2005, the government has agreed to only grant OPS to employees who began their employment before that year’, a disgruntled employee remarked.
Nearly 8,000 government workers in Kutch, the majority of whom were teachers, chose not to report for work as a sign of protest. ‘ We have chosen to carry on with the mass CL agitation today as our key demand for OPS has not been granted. Nearly 8,000 workers, including teachers, are on vacation today in the Kutch district ‘, said Jakhrabhai Kerashiya of Kutch Prathmik Shaikshik Mahasangh.
Digvijaysinh Jadeja, the president of the Samyukt Karmachari Morcha, and Bhikhabhai Patel, the leader of the Rashtriya Samyukt Morcha, said on Friday that the mass leave protest had been called off because the government had agreed to most of their demands, with the exception of the reintroduction of OPS. The state administration declared on Friday that employees who started working before April 2005 would be eligible for benefits from the General Provident Fund and the previous pension system.
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