Employees of the Sylhet Gas Field Limited, a sister concern of the sate-owned Petrobangla, on Tuesday threatened to start fast-unto-death in front of the institution
office from June 2 if their job was not regularised by this time.
They made the announcement during their daylong sit-in in front of the SGFL main office at Chiknagol on the Sylhet city outskirts.
They are also to observe a token hunger strike between 9:00am and 1:00pm today and between 9:00am and 5:00pm tomorrow as part of their weeklong demonstrations to push for the demand.
A total of 54 Class IV employees, who have been working for 8-10 years under a master-rule, also staged demonstration, wearing black-badges in front of the office on Monday.
Addressing the Tuesday’s rally, the workers’ representatives claimed that they were forced to lead an inhuman life along with their family members as they are being deprived of all facilities of the government service as their jobs are not regularised by the gas field authorities.
‘Everybody knows that it is too hard to maintain the daily needs with only Tk 100 for per working day. But, the company authorities do not take any initiative to regularise our service despite repeated requests in this regard,’ one of the speakers said in the rally.
The workers vowed that they would continue their movement until the gas field authorities agreed to regularise their services based on viva-voce.
Workers’ representative Nazmul Islam, Mizanur Rahman, Saidur Rahman, Khaled Ahmed, Mazu Hossain, Jalal Uddin, Nibaran Devnath and Nurun Nahar, among others, addressed the rally.
SGFL general managing for administration Pratul Chandra Roy, confirming the agitation of the employees, said, ‘Applications have already been invited to recruit some 84 workers in different categories that include gardener, cleaner, security guard and office attendant and the academic qualification has been lessened to Class VIII from SSC while the age limit has been kept up to 45 years for the casual workers, since they have been working here for many years,’ he added.
He, however, said their demand for recruitment through only their viva was not logical.
‘It is very difficult to recruit them without taking any written examination according to the public recruitment process,’ Pratul Chandra Roy said.
-With New Age input
