THE All Government Employees Grand Alliance Punjab (AGEGA) is protesting against rising inflation and the recent amendments aimed at abolishing the privileges of the provincial employees. The AGEGA leaders pointed out that people were committing suicide due to ever-increasing inflation and the Government has turned a blind eye to their plight.
The Punjab Government, under the leadership of Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz, is implementing a gigantic agenda aimed at transforming the entire socio-economic landscape of the province. However, it is regrettable that the Government policy towards welfare of its employees, who are the implementing machinery for the agenda, is highly discriminatory. The provincial government deprived them of the pensionary benefits that are available to their counterparts in the federal and other provincial government. It also denied them last year’s disparity reduction allowance and increased pays and pensions nominally this year, adding to the frustration of the employees and senior citizens. The protestors have a genuine point in complaining that they were not asking for blue passports, palaces, luxury cars or a 600% increase in salaries but want restoration of their snatched benefits, which were minimal. The provincial government is denying rightful benefits to its employees on the plea of financial constraints but perks and privileges being offered to the elite belie this claim. Similarly, the Government has no money to run schools and pay salaries to teachers but funds are generously doled out to privatized schools on the basis of alleged fake enrolment. The provincial government must listen to the genuine grievances of its employees, retract its unfair policies and ensure that civil servants and retired employees are treated like their fellows in the federal and other provincial governments, if not in a better way. There are also reasons to believe that the existing discriminatory policy of the Punjab Government is compounding the problem of corruption in public dealing offices.
