Prasar Bharati Employees Staged a Nationwide Protest Against Discrimination

Prasar Bharati Employees Staged a Nationwide Protest Against Discrimination by the 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 in front of the Prasar Bharati Secretariat in Delhi at lunchtime. Apart from the capital Delhi, this peaceful demonstration took place in front of the offices of All India Radio and Doordarshan in many cities of the country including Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Patna, Ranchi and Shimla.

Prasar Bharati employees protest was organised by JAF

The demonstration was organized by the Joint Action Forum for Prasar Bharati Employees, a joint forum formed by various organizations of Prasar Bharati’s program, 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 a discriminatory attitude towards the employees selected after this date.

Nationwide protest by Prasar Bharati employees

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.

Even before this, Prasar Bharati employees had demonstrated peacefully in front of the Prasar Bharati Secretariat on September 19 regarding their demands. Seeing their demands not being met, Prasar Bharati employees again staged a nationwide peaceful protest today.

Prasar Bharati employees protest: Statement by the President of APBEE

Hari Pratap Gautam, president of the Association of Prasar Bharati Engineering Employees, said, “There is no concrete system for the treatment of Prasar Bharati employees. Our demand from Prasar Bharati is that CGHS benefits for employees, group insurance, family pension, equal post, equal pay, 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 Prasar Bharati. Two types of government employees work here. One of which is those who were selected before October 5, 2007, and the other is those who were selected after this date.

Prasar Bharati employees protest: Statement by the President of APO

Mohan Kumar Yadav, president of the Association of Program Officers, another organization participating in the protest, alleged that Prasar 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.”

Prasar Bharati employees protest: Statement by the President of PBPEWA

Shivam Shivhare, president of Prasar 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. Used to be.“

Reason for discrimination that forced Prasar Bharati employees to do a nationwide protest

It is noteworthy that Prasar Bharati came into existence as an autonomous unit on November 23, 1997. After its coming into existence, Prasar Bharati had to make separate arrangements for its employees. In the year 2012, an amendment was made to the Prasar Bharati Act. With this amendment, a decision of the Group of Ministers came into effect.

In the meeting, it was decided that the employees who were working here before October 5, 2007, would be considered Government of India employees and the employees coming after that would be considered Prasar 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 Prasar Bharati. After the demonstration, the employees also submitted a memorandum regarding their demands to the Chief Executive Officer Prasar Bharati in Delhi and the heads of Doordarshan and All India Radio across the country.