Mangalore: Hundreds of Workers March in Protest, Detained by Police
Pics: Ramesh Pandith
Daijiworld Media Network - Mangalore (VM)
Mangalore, Dec 19: Hundreds of workers belonging to different trade unions marched in protest here on Wednesday December 19 urging fulfilment of their various demands.
Trade unions including BMS, INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, NOBW, BGIF, BIFI, BSNLEU, DREU, RMS and others together participated in the 'jail bharo' protest.
Prior to the protest near the DC's office, a rally was held from Town Hall in which 300-400 people participated.
The workers put forward various demands like minimum salary to be fixed at Rs 10,000, stabilization of price hike, more employment generation, security for workers irrespective of their membership to trade unions, provident fund, bonus and pension on par with permanent employees and so on.
Addressing the gathering, state vice-president of CITU said that an all-India strike will be held on Feburary 20 and 21, 2013 if immediate steps are not taken to fulfil their demands.
"For the past three years we have been staging such protests and rallies but the central government has still not responded to our pleas. The general people and workers are facing lot of problems as prices are increasing day by day and they do have enough salary to cope with the inflation. Hence, minimum salary should be fixed at Rs 10,000. The government does not understand our problems," he said.
Vishwanath Shetty, BMS district president, P Sanjeeva, AITUC district leader, Sunil Kumar Bajal, CPI(M) secretary, Vasanth Achar, Balakrishna Shetty, Vinod Kumar, Karunakar Shetty
and others were present.
The protestors were detained by the Pandeshwar police and later released.