After a fruitful meeting with Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde on Monday, protesting state government employees have called off a week-long strike. Around 1.8 million state government employees were on strike for implementation of the Old Pension Scheme (OPS).
Vishwas Katkar, convenor of the state government employees’ unions, who, along with other members, attended the meeting, said the state has agreed “in-principle” to reconsider the implementation of the OPS.
“We have been assured by the state that they are positive about the implementation of the OPS. They have given such an assurance in writing. Also, the government is ready to take back notices issued to officials on strike. Thus, we have also decided to cooperate with the state by withdrawing our strike,” said Katkar.
Shinde welcomed the decision. “We are positive about the demands of the striking employees. The committee, which is studying the issue of OPS, has been asked to submit its report and the final decision will be taken as early as possible,” he said.
ROCKED THE HOUSE
This issue rocked the Shinde-Fadnavis government as the Opposition parties cornered the state in both the houses of the assembly. Opposition leader Ajit Pawar raised it in the lower house of the state assembly on the first day of this strike and asked the government to resolve it as early as possible.
Opposition leader in the council Ambadas Danave asked the state government to consider their demand with retrospective effect.
While taking back the strike, Katkar also requested all union members to complete the pending work as early as possible so that people who got affected due to this strike won’t have to suffer anymore. Along with common man, farmers, too, were affected due to this strike as panchnamas of untimely rain and hailstorm got further delayed.
WHY OPS?
In 2005, the Maharashtra government discontinued OPS and replaced it with a new pension scheme under which the pension amount was deducted from employees’ salaries.
In OPS, the employees used to get 50% of the basic salary as pension, but in the new scheme, the amount is not even 25% of the basic salary.
In 2005, when the then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh government stopped the OPS, Maharashtra had a debt of around ₹1.10 lakh crore. The recent state budget expected the debt to reach ₹6,49,699 crore by the end of the current fiscal year.
States such as Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal have started the implementation of the OPS.
Read all the Latest Politics News here
Comments
0 comment