On cease work strike since March 22 :: To employees : Be assets of Govt
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: April 21 2018 -

The question is, how does the Government hope to deal with the cease work strike launched by the JAC of AMTUC and AMGEO since March 22 in pursuit of their demand that the 7th Pay be implemented for the State Government employees ?

Is the Government paying any heed to the demand of the employees ?

Importantly has the JAC ever given a thought on whether it is practical for the Government to adopt the 7th Pay recommendations, given the financial health of the State ?

At the moment there are no answers to these posers, but surely a cease work strike that has dragged on since March 22 cannot be good for anyone.

Can there be no meeting point ? Will the JAC back off if the Government gives a verbal assurance that the 7th Pay will be implemented within a time frame ?

Something along this line has already been touched by the JAC some time back to the effect that what they are demanding is not immediate implementation of the 7th Pay but a time frame within which the Government will be able to adopt the new pay structure.

Since the Government has not been able to do this, it may be assumed that indeed the financial health of the State is such that it would not be in a position to even give a time frame, let alone its implementation.

Both sides have their share of argument.

To the JAC, it makes no sense to let the State Government employees stick to the current pay structure though they do the same amount of work as the Central Government employees while to the State Government, the situation is such that it cannot afford to see a repeat of what happened when the 5th Pay was implemented sometime in 2000/2001 and over draft became staple news items in the all the Imphal based newspapers.

As things stand today, the cease work strike appears set to be intensified with ministerial staff of essential services set to join the agitation.

What is the way forward for the Government ?

Can it just invoke the provisions of the law and come down hard on the striking employees ?

After the cease work strike was launched, there has been no report of the Government sitting down with the JAC to talk things over, though employees of other associations did talk with Chief Secretary Dr J Suresh Babu.

It is here that both sides need to realise the constraints of each other.

With practically no resources, the State Government will obviously be hard pressed to meet the demand of the JAC.

On the other hand, the Government too need to acknowledge that State Government employees cannot be expected to be happy with the 6th Pay that was implemented nearly 10 years back, while Central Government employees will be enjoying the new pay structure.

It is a deadlock no doubt, but the deadlock cannot go on forever.

Avenues need to be explored to come to a meeting point and while the Government may be doing this, it has so far not borne any positive results.

The State Government here should see how it can take advantage of having a friendly Government at Delhi and translate the positive meaning of having BJP led Governments both at Delhi and Imphal.

This is one way of exploring avenues to break the deadlock.

The JAC too need to understand the constraints of the Government and come to the point that they also need to be assets of the Goovernment.