DA crisis: Bipartite meeting fails, employees threaten wider agitation

Kolkata, April 21 (SocialNews.XYZ) The bipartite meeting between the West Bengal government and the joint forum of state government employees on Friday, to discuss issues like pending dearness allowance (DA) arrears and payment of enhanced DA at par with Central government employees, has failed.

After the meeting, the joint forum, spearheading the movement, threatened to go for wider movements including continuous strike in the coming days in support of their demands in the matter.

Chief Secretary H.K. Dwivedi, Home Secretary B.P. Gopalika and Finance Secretary, Manoj Pant represented the state government in the meeting.

"The state government representatives told us that they are unable to pay pending DA arrears or enhanced DA at par with the Central government employees because of Central government dues to the state government. However, quoting figures, we pointed out that the state government has enough corpus to pay as per our legitimate demands. However, despite figures being presented from our side, the Chief Secretary was unable to give any satisfactory answer on when our demands will be fulfilled. So, the outcome of the meeting was zero and hence we will go for bigger movements on this issue in the coming days," joint forum convener Bhaskar Ghosh told newspersons after emerging from the meeting.

No comments were offered by any of the state government representatives.

The matter relating to dearness allowance payment will come up from hearing at the Supreme Court on April 24 after being postponed a number of times.

Source: IANS