UP government employees end strike, resume work on Friday

Lucknow, Aug 12: About 16 lakh employees of the Uttar Pradesh government across 155 departments ended their strike after negotiations late on Thursday with senior officials and resumed work on Friday.

Within a fortnight, the employees would be given cashless medical treatment facilities through a government order, an official spokesman said.

The workers resumed work after assurances on Thursday night from the government that sub-committees will be set up to look into other demands and take a sympathetic view on them, Hari Kishore Tiwari, a leader of the striking employees, said.

A committee, set up earlier this week under the chairmanship of the agriculture production commissioner (APC), has been asked to expedite decision-making on various other issues, like settling of salary disparities, within the next 15-days.

Demands of the Aanganwadi workers, Accredited social health activists called ASHA Bahu's, employment guarantee scheme MGNREGS workers and ad hoc employees will also be looked into at the earliest, Chief Secretary Deepak Singhal assured the employees.

The garbage dumps in the state capital and many other districts that were overflowing with refuse over the past two days are also likely to be cleared on Friday.

The two-day strike is estimated to have caused a loss of more than Rs 1,500 crore in terms of government revenue.

IANS