- Govt likely to invoke ESMA against striking employees

By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 8 Feb: Government is mulling invoking the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) after the striking employees of various departments continued to ignore the appeals and warnings issued. A final decision in this respect is likely to be taken by tomorrow.
Ministerial Employees meanwhile continued their strike for the 29th day today not taking any cognisance of the directives issued to them to return to work. Nearly 30,000 ministerial employees across the state are on strike since 11 January.
An urgent meeting was summoned today by Chief Secretary NS Napalchyal to discuss the continuance of the strike by ministerial and other employees and invoking ESMA. The meeting continued till late into the evening and was attended by Principal Secretaries, Secretaries and senior police officers.
Highly placed sources indicated that a final decision on invoking ESMA was likely tomorrow once the deadline on returning to work got over. Action was likely against those who failed to join duty by tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the Uttarakhand Employees Joint Union has declared that it is in no way connected with the strike. On the other hand, striking employees working in various ministries decided to continue their stir despite the Government's warning to initiate tough action against them. The deadline for returning to duty is ending today. The employees declared that that they would not join duty till their major demand on upgrading the payband of Chief Assistant was met.
"We will continue the stir till our demand is fulfilled," said Sunil Dutt Kothari, State General Secretary of the Federation of Ministerial Services Association.