A day after the talks with the state government ended in a deadlock the members of the Joint Action Council of Tamil Nadu Teachers Organisations and Government Employees Organisation (Jacto-Geo) went on a mass casual leave across the state on Tuesday and staged token protests.
Jacto-Geo, the supreme body of government employees and teachers, warned the Stalin-led DMK government in the state that it would face the wrath of the government employees if it failed to deliver on the promises made by the party during the 2021 general elections. Their talks with a panel of four state ministers on Monday failed as the government refused to accept their demands including the implementation of the old pension scheme.
A total of 11 lakh government employees and teachers have been demanding 10-charter points including getting back to the old pension scheme from the existing contributory pension scheme. The employees also demanded the government to release the surrender leave benefits, and salary of secondary grade teachers, graduate teachers, high and higher secondary school headmasters, physical directors and instructors on par with the pay scale of the central government employees.
Apart from the pension scheme and the pay scale, the government employees and teachers also demanded the School Education Department drop the GO 243 and solve the pay parity among the teachers, and government employees, promote the secondary school teachers to graduate teachers, time pay scale for the Anganwadi workers, village assistants and panchayat secretaries who are provided with a consolidated pay scale and filling the vacancies in the departments where 30 per cent of vacancies exist.
They also demanded to streamline the pay scale of the teachers and government employees who were appointed between 2002 and 2004.
Earlier on February 5 when Jacto-Geo announced their call for protest on February 25, the state government requested them to defer the protests for four weeks and asked the association to come for talks. But the talks with the four-member ministerial committee and later with Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, on Monday, failed. Following this, the employees went on a mass casual leave on February 25.
“This is only a token protest. We will continue to fight if the government doesn’t revert back to the old pension scheme as they promised in the 2021 manifesto. We all voted for DMK only because they promised,” says a senior officer at the secretariat who went on casual leave along with his colleagues.
