Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Sunday declared to hold an agitation to force the Congress-led Punjab Government to release 22 percent DA (dearness allowance) to the state government employees.

In addition, the party maintained that pressure would be built on the government to immediately release the Sixth Pay Commission report, and regularise 27,000 government employees (including contractual and ad-hoc).

“Congress Government should come clean and tell why it is not releasing four instalments of DA amounting to a total of Rs 4,000 crore. When the fifth instalment of DA was due now, the government had approved release of one instalment of only six percent. This is a pittance considering that this approval amounts to only a two percent increase on the recommendations of the seventh central pay commission,” said the former Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa.

Asking the Congress government not to play games with employees and try to befool them as it had befooled and betrayed farmers, youth and Dalits, Dhindsa said that the Government should give interim relief to employees immediately by hiking the basic pay by 10 percent after merging DA with it. “We will agitate to make this a reality”, he added.

Dhindsa also lambasted the Congress Government for deliberately delaying release of the report of the sixth Punjab Pay Commission. Instead of giving relief to the State employees by directing the Commission to submit its report immediately, the Government had extended its term., he added

Akali leader said that employees had also been demanding regularization of services of all 27,000 contractual employees who had been identified by the previous SAD-BJP Government and for whom the Punjab Adhoc, Contractual, Daily wage, Temporary,

Work Charged and Outsourced Employees’ Welfare Bill, 2016, was also passed after convening a special assembly session.

He said that it was unfortunate that the Congress government was refusing to implement the Act. He also condemned reduction in salaries of RMSA and SSA teachers.