Remove pay anomalies of Rehbar-e-Janglat employees, treat them at par with their counterparts in other deptts: JK AP’s Ashraf Mir

Srinagar :Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party (JKAP) leader and former minister Mohammad Ashraf Mir on Thursday urged the J&K government to do away with the anomalies in Rehbar-e-Janglat (ReJ) policy within a stipulated time frame.
In a statement issued here, Mir said that forestry graduates and post graduates who have already been recruited under ReJ policy are suffering undesirably because of the gross variation in their grade pay and other emoluments as compared to their counterparts recruited under Rehbar-e-Taleem, Rehbar-e-Zirrat and Rehbar-e-Khel Schemes. “The brazen disparity in remunerations of ReJ employees recruited under a policy similar to ReT, ReZ and ReK needs to be removed. The government must also ask the committee headed by the Chief Secretary to conclude its review of Rehbar-e-Janglat policy and come up with concrete recommendations without any further delay,” Mir observed.
Contrary to other similar policies, the JKAP leader said that a post graduate recruit under Rehbar-e-Janglat policy has been compared with a forest guard, a post, which has comparatively a lesser eligibility criteria as per the J&K service recruitment rules.“It is a sheer injustice with the forestry graduates that the government is implementing its own policies having identical genesis and objectives, in diametrically opposite directions especially with regard to grade pays of the ReJ employees. This disparity has created a lot of demotivation among the ReJs who want justice to prevail,” he opined.
Mir said that most of the Rehbar-e-Janglat employees have crossed the age bar and their chances of promotion in the department are minimal at this level thus further depriving them of career progression. He added that hundreds of employees with BSc, MSc and even PhD degrees in forestry who have been appointed as ReJs are suffering immensely because of the discriminatory provisions of the ReJ policy. “The government should immediately go for necessary modifications in ReJ policy in order to provide some relief to the thousands of forestry graduates. It is also hoped that the high level committee will come up with some concrete solutions to remove pay and eligibility anomalies in ReJ policy without any further delay,” Mir stressed.