PATIALA: Punjab leader of opposition (LoP) Harpal Singh Cheema has said his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) will not only include the demand for restoring the old pension scheme for government employees in its election manifesto but also fulfil the promise if voted to power in 2022.
At the state-level protest rally of the CPF Employees Union of Punjab here for the restoration of the old pension scheme, Cheema said the AAP will accept all the legitimate demands of the working class. He said: “Employees are the administration’s backbone but the Congress government is suppressing them. First it discontinued the old pension scheme in 2004 and then closed the avenues for government jobs by implementing a contract system. It robbed lakhs of Punjab employees of their jobs in the name of restructuing advised by the sixth state pay commission.”
He accused even the former Congress MPs and MLAs of “robbing the exchequer by keeping unnecessary advisers and allowances, while denying pension to those who had served the government for 30 years”. Cheema claimed that 1.5 lakh raw, ad-hoc, contract, and outsourced workers in the state had poverty-level wages for the last 12 years but the Congress government had not regularised their jobs despite its election promise.
The LoP accused the state of abolishing allowances given for transport, urban housing, cash care, and family planning, besides scrapping NPAs of doctors, secretariat staff and drivers.
