Punjab Newspaper

The Shiromani Akali Dal president Mr. Parkash Singh Badal today dismissed the setting up of the Fifth Pay Commission in Punjab as “a delaying tactic and the final act of betrayal of the employees by the state Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh.”
“With just three and half months left for the announcement of the poll process in the state, the Chief Minister has finally washed his hands off all the commitments made by him to the employees in the Congress manifesto before the 2002 assembly elections. He has clearly pushed the issue beyond the tenure of his office, but we will gladly fulfill all these commitments once the SAD and allies form a government in the state,” said Mr. Badal in a statement here today.
The Akali leader also described the decision to remove enhanced VAT on the recent hike in petrol prices as “too little too late” as the farmers had already been forced to spend heavily on diesel all through the summer. “The decision is merely a compliance of the directions of the Union Government to all the states not to charge VAT on enhanced price of petroleum products. Punjab in fact is the last state to do this which only showed just how much Amarinder cared for the people of his state,” said Mr. Badal.

Mr. Badal said that a close reading of all the decisions at yesterday’s Meeting of the Punjab Council of Ministers (CMM) made it clear that ‘despite daily boasts of the exchequer overflowing with funds’, the Chief Minister was unwilling to spend people’s money except on the so-called mega projects in which huge bribes were allegedly flowing into his personal coffers.

Referring to the decision on the setting up of the Pay Commission, the Akali leader said that the employees of the state had waited for the entire tenure of this government to get their dues. “The decision is a loud admission by the Chief Minister that his government is on the way out as he has ruled a solution to the employees problems under the present regime,” he said, adding however that this decision of the government left a record intact.
“All the Pay Commission reports in the past have been implemented by the SAD governments. Now that this Commission has been asked to submit its report in fourteen months, it is clear that Amarinder is leaving it to the next government to address the misery of the employees,” he said, and added that the prospective SAD government would not let the employees down. Mr. Badal recalled that the Congress had made loud and tall claims on solving the problems of the employees, including the removal pay anomalies, streamlining promotion avenues through the implementation of the 9-4-14 scheme and had promised to meet all other demands raised by the employees.