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Government may rope in private couriers as postal strike continues

The government will implement a contingency plan to maintain postal services so as to avoid inconvenience to the public due to the strike by postal employees, Communications Minister Sushma Swaraj told the Rajya Sabha today.

In a statement on the six-day-old strike, Swaraj asserted that the government would make all-out efforts to maintain the postal services in the country and had made elaborate arrangements in this regard.

She said the contingency plan would also include deployment of private courier services.

Swaraj at the same time, appealed to the striking employees to appreciate the efforts of the government to resolve their problems and maintain an atmosphere of understanding and co-operation. ''The government hopes that better sense will prevail on the striking postal employees particularly when I have given an assurance on more than one occasion, of the government's firm intention to protect the interests of employees and to sympathetically consider their legitimate demands and resolve them in a just manner.''

Swaraj maintained that the continuance of the strike was not in the public interest nor in the interest of the department or the postal employees themselves.

Swaraj told members that the government had held threadbare discussions with the joint consultative machinery representing the staff on various aspects of the Fifth Pay Commission's recommendations. One of the issues which had remained unresolved related to the grant of upgraded payscales to postmen and mail guard of the department of posts, and this item had figured in the agreement signed with the staff side on September 11.

She said two major demands of the employees relating to revision of bonus and implementation of Justice Talwar committee's recommendations were under the government's active consideration. It was also considering sympathetically the other demands mentioned in the charter of demands and a decision in these cases would also be taken.

Swaraj made it clear that the government would not buckle under pressure to meet the demands of the striking postal employees.

She said she had been attending to the problems of the workers from the day she assumed charge of the communications department. She said pay parity between postmen and central police organisation constables, which was disturbed by the United Front government, had been restored.

Meanwhile, the strike by 600,000 postal employees crippled mail services all over the country for the sixth day today.

Services at various post offices in the national capital remained paralysed, with sacks full of mail piling up while the standoff between the government and the trade unions continued. There is no solution in sight as the government has refused to buckle under any pressure even though both sides agree that they were open to negotiations.

UNI

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