The J&K youth have consistently raised the voice against the anti youth job policy from last four years,but there seems to be no one listening to their wails in administration. The youth of J&K have always suffered due to the absurd and unjustifiable policies of state government. A similar iniquitous policy was framed in June 2015 by then PDP-BJP Government which has adversely affected the dignity ,honour and social setup of employees recruited under it.SRO 202 is a gross injustice to employees who are facing the brunt of such policies while government has absolutely no satisfactory reason to issue such orders.
The scene of the policy is that a candidate selected for a government service will get only basic pay for first five years of his service. They will be devoid of their right of getting different allowances for first five years. They will also be not entitled to New Pension Scheme(NPS) benefits for those years ,which will surely effect their concept of govt service.
It is most unfortunate that the youth who have doctorate ,post graduate and professional degrees are petted against such policies as a reward to their hardwork of their academic career spanning over 20 years. Such employees get selected through JKPSC and JKSSB where the the success rate is just 2-5%.
Making the policy selective for non gazetted cadre posts and certain gazetted posts shows its unequal behaviour,absurdness and nonsensicalness. Some government institutes of the state like Jammu & Kashmir Highcourt,Kashmir University are not enforcing any rule of the SRO 202. There is no uniformity at all.But irony is that rich is made richer and poor poorer.They just doubled the salary of MLAs at the same time to ensure maximum turnout for themselves and leaving the issue of working staff brooding over the shelf.
Leaving the efficient youth in trouble for sake of themselves is no less than a turmoil for them. And I remember when the candidates would frequently pressurise the govt to scrap the policy ,they would utterly eulogise that it was meant to curb the financial crunch in state and where not you already acknowledged with the terms and conditions of your job. Such imprudent and hypocritic character of policy makers was always disheartening besides taking off their belief on democratic institutions.
The policy has inflicted a vigour of corruption and nepotism in the minds of new employees.The mark of disloyalty with their service will get a new height and they do have a solid reason for it and that is ignorance of the govt. When they are not treated with equal pay as their old counterparts, the have started the other mediums of earning on the same table. ‘Right to Equality’ has been shattered deeply. The supreme court judgement ‘Equal Pay for Equal Work’ has been rendered meaningless with negligible application here. In short this policy has been a bruise over the policies of the governance.Moreover according to the rules of this ordinance every recruitment made under it must be completed within a period of three months and appointment order to be issued within 15 days from the date of issuance of selection list.That is posts were to be filled under fast track basis.But they failed here also as almost all the selections done under this policy took more than one and half years on average to complete and appointment orders also were issued accordingly with same sluggish speed and took two to three months for formal appointment orders for all the advertisements.
Coming to the the financial burden for the government of these sro 202 employees,that is very meagre almost negligible with respect to total financial implications of state.Till now merely ten thousand appointments have been made under this policy. With implementation of seventh pay commission ,the difference in salary between sro 202 employees and their non sro 202 counterparts has been severely reduced and is ranging between four thousand to six thousand.So increasing these few thousand rupees for some ten thousand employees has very less financial implications for government.
Government must come to the rescue of the career of faithful and hardworking students and the removal of this policy is the only way out. Both students and effected employees expect that Lt.Governor DC Murmur who is talking much of corruption, transparency and equal opportunities for all will come to their rescue.
Bhat Zaieem is a teacher at Department of education and can be reached at bhatzaieem25@gmail.com
