Srinagar : Hakeem Muhammad Yaseen, President of Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Front (PDF) and former minister, on Tuesday strongly criticized the formation of a new committee for the regularization of daily wagers, calling it a repeated exercise with no tangible outcomes.
The announcement made by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah regarding a high-powered committee headed by the Chief Secretary, Yaseen said that merely forming committees will not address the plight of thousands of daily wagers, ad hoc, and casual laborers who have been waiting for years for their regularization. “Committees have been formed in the past as well—be it during the tenure of CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, CM Ghulam Nabi Azad, or even the National Conference governments. Yet, the issue remains unresolved. Daily wagers were expecting a concrete announcement about their regularization today, but instead, they have been given old wine in a new bottle,” Yaseen remarked.
He further emphasized that previous governments had already collected data on daily wagers, and rather than setting up another committee, the administration should verify the existing records and resolve this long-pending issue once and for all. Yaseen said that the data is already there. What more needs to be assessed? The government should move directly toward implementation,” he added.
He also criticized the previous PDP-BJP coalition government for failing to address the issue despite making commitments in budget documents from 2015 to 2018. “It is disappointing that instead of concrete action, we are witnessing another delay tactic. The daily wagers have been struggling for years, and it is high time the government moves beyond committees and takes decisive action,” Yaseen said. He called upon the government to expedite the process and provide a time-bound roadmap to ensure that daily wagers receive their due rights without further bureaucratic delays.
