Pen-down strike: Calcutta HC staff join stir over pending DA arrears

Kolkata, Feb 21 The second day of the two-day pen-down strike by the joint forum of state government employees in West Bengal demanding payment of pending dearness allowance (DA) arrears on Tuesday crippled normal functioning at different state government offices.

On Tuesday, the staff of the Calcutta High Court also participated in the pen-down strike, severely hampering court proceedings.

Most of the regular hearings barring the urgent ones were cancelled. In case of pronouncement of verdicts, the judges had to either pen down the verdicts themselves or had to get them done by their personal assistants, as court clerks participated in the pen-down strike.

Like Monday, the state government employees reached their offices in time and marked their attendance, but refrained from performing their daily assignment. Hence, despite having normal attendance like regular days, the work flow was adversely affected to a great extent.

On Tuesday, besides observing the pen-down strike at different state government offices, the members of the joint forum continued their sit-in demonstration on the streets of Kolkata protesting against the non-payment of pending DA arrears.

The agitating staff said that it is because of the hard work of the employees that the state government has won so many national and international awards for different schemes.

"We want to work. We are ready to take West Bengal to the number one position among all the states. But we want recognition for our hard work, which is payment of our DA arrears. So we have observed this pen-down strike so that the state government accepts our demands," said Sougata Lahiri, one of the agitators.

On February 15, the state government had announced an additional 3 per cent DA for the state government employees. However, the joint forum has already described it as farce, pointing out that even after this, the gap of the state government employees with that of their counterparts in the Union government remains at 32 per cent.

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