Prasar Bharati : Employees and officers of the country’s public service broadcaster Prasar Bharati today held a nationwide peaceful demonstration to end the discrimination being faced by them on the basis of a cutoff date of 5 October 2007. This demonstration was held at Prasar Bharati campus in the capital Dehradun at 1:15 pm. Apart from the state capital Dehradun, there are offices of All India Radio and Doordarshan in many cities of the country including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Patna, Chandigarh, Raipur, Agartala, Bhopal, Ranchi and Shimla. This peaceful demonstration took place in front of.
The demonstration was organized by the Joint Action Forum for Prasar Bharati Employees, a joint forum formed by various organizations of Prasar Bharati’s programme, engineering and admin employees. Joint Action Forum for Prasar Bharati Employees also announced to celebrate 5th October as Black Day because Prasar Bharati is adopting discriminatory attitude towards the employees selected after this date.
Hundreds of Prasar Bharati employees and officers across the country participated in this demonstration with their demands. The protesting employees had many demands, including equal pay for equal work, promotion and benefits of the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) provided to the central employees of the Government of India for better health facilities.
It is noteworthy that Jyoti Prakash Trivedi, an employee of Prasar Bharati, died of cancer last month due to lack of proper health facilities. Due to which, Prasar Bharati employees had demonstrated peacefully in front of Prasar Bharati Secretariat on 19th September regarding better health facilities, family pension and other demands. Not seeing their demands being met, Prasar Bharati employees again held a nationwide peaceful demonstration today.
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Hari Pratap Gautam, president of the Association of Prasar Bharati Engineering Employees, said, “There is no concrete arrangement for the treatment of Prasar Bharati employees. Our demand from Prasar Bharati is that the benefits of CGHS, group insurance, family pension, similar Post: Equal salary and other benefits including timely promotion should also be given to us.
Hari Pratap Gautam also alleged that Prasar Bharati has not yet started paying the 14 percent contribution to be given by the employer in the new pension scheme announced by the Central Government in the year 2019. He demanded that Prasar Bharati should contribute 14 percent of the pension amount every month to the employees’ pension fund.
Doordarshan and All India Radio come under Bharati. Two types of government employees work here. One of which are those who were selected before October 5, 2007 and the other are those who were selected after this date.
Mohan Kumar Yadav, president of Association of Program Officers, another organization participating in the protest, alleged that Bharati is discriminating against the employees selected after October 5, 2007. He says, “We have been exploited since this date. Because of this, not only health facilities but also other facilities are not available to us. Like two people work on the same post, but their salary is more, ours is less.”
Shivam Shivhare, President of Bharti Program Employees Welfare Association, another organization participating in this protest, said, “Employees selected before October 5, 2007, are being promoted on time, while employees selected after this date are not being promoted. ”
It is noteworthy that Bharati came into existence as an autonomous unit on November 23, 1997. After its coming into existence, Bharati had to make separate arrangements for its employees. In the year 2012, amendments were made in the Bharati Act. With this amendment, a decision of the Group of Ministers came into effect. In which it was decided that the employees who were working here before October 5, 2007, would be considered as Government of India employees and the employees coming after that would be considered as Bharati employees. In this way, two types of government employees started working here. One is a central employee and the other is an employee of Prasar Bharati.
It is noteworthy that the number of employees recruited after October 5, 2007 is approximately 2600. All these employees are troubled by the discrimination being done by Bharati. After the demonstration, the employees also submitted a memorandum regarding their demands to the Chief Executive Officer Bharati in Delhi and the heads of Doordarshan and All India Radio across the country.
Major demands of P,Bharati employees
CGHS benefits for all employees,
Equal pay for equal post,
Timely promotion without discrimination among employees,
Benefits of group insurance,
Family pension to the family of employees on their death during service period,
Immediate start of 14 percent employer contribution to the New Pension Scheme (NPS), and,
Abolition of “cut-off date” of 05 October 2007 which causes discrimination among employees