Officers join statewide stir

BHUBANESWAR: The Statewide agitation by the jail employees of Orissa escalated on Monday with the officers resolving to join the stir. While eight staff members of Jharpada Special Jail, on hunger strike since Sunday, were rushed to the hospital, more such reports trickled in from districts.Over 2,000 prison staff, under the banner of All Orissa Jail Employees Association, have been agitating since June 30 seeking pay parity and service benefits on par with other service cadres. On Sunday, they launched a hunger strike with the State Government paying no heed to their three-day black badge protest. Sources in the Special Jail said, the day-to-day work was beginning to be hit with as many as eight warders taken ill after Sunday’s hunger strike.While the State Government remained mum on their demands, about 300 jail officers decided to join the agitation on Monday. “We will join the employees and protest peacefully,” Jail Officers Association president Biswabhanu Patnaik said.The officers may even consider going on  leave en masse if their demands are not conceded, Patnaik said adding, the discrimination meted out to the jail staff is unjustified.Ever since the 5th Pay Commission, the jail employees and officers have been left behind their counterparts in other cadres. In the last pay commission, they were handed out a worse pay band compared to their contemporaries in police, fire service who raced ahead in terms of benefits.  “When a DIG-rank officer is posted in the Prison Directorate on deputation, he or she gets the pay as per the rank and seniority whereas someone posted from the Prison cadre gets less. This is humiliating,” Patnaik said.Basing on the demands, the State Government had constituted an anomaly committee which submitted its recommendations but to no avail. All that the Government will have to shell out, according to the jail officers, is ` 9 lakh annually on the revised package of the officers.In fact, the Prison Directorate had submitted its proposal to the Home Department which placed it before the Finance Department for approval. There has been no progress on the matter ever since.