Shillong, June 10: Contractual employees under the banner of the All North Eastern Hill University Workers’ Union (ANEHUWU) on Friday decided to continue with their ongoing hunger strike due to failure of the university authority to regularise their services.
Addressing a news conference, president of the Union, Napolean Mawphniang said the union had on April 29 submitted a memorandum to the NEHU Vice Chancellor Prof PS Shukla urging his intervention for regularization of the services of the contractual employees and to implement the equal pay for equal work.
Unfortunately till date, neither the Vice Chancellor nor the Registrar had shown any interest to call them for talks to discuss the demands of the contractual employees.
“Thirty days have passed since the memorandum has been submitted by the union and the employees have been protesting since the first day of this month yet there has been absolutely no response from the NEHU authority,” Mawphniang said.
The other demands include benefits like Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees’ State Insurance (ESI).
There are over 700 contractual employees working in both Shillong and Tura campus of the University. Majority of them have been working for the past 15 to 20 years and, hence, this demand.
Mawphniang said that the union will intensify its agitation if its demands continue to fall on deaf ears.
He further alleged that the authority has threatened to deduct their salary and chances are that they may even be deprived of getting salary following the protest.
“However, we want to send a clear message to the Vice Chancellor and the Registrar that we are not outsiders but we are the employees and some are even former students of NEHU who stand for the rights of the employees of the university,” he said.
Meanwhile, a lady employee of NEHU alleged that the employees are not given their maternity leave and if a mother takes leave they are informed that they might lose their job.
“We want a written reply from NEHU whether the university can or cannot regularise our services so that we can decide our next course of action,” said the agitating employees.
