CONSUMED CAREERS

Successive governments have mindlessly “hired” people on an ad-hoc, provisional and temporary basis. They keep the government’s service delivery show going on at almost half of the daily wage guaranteed by law. Merely surviving on a hope that one day their services will be regularised, these more than 60,000 families are dying almost on daily basis. They are at the core of a social crisis, reports Yawar Hussain

- Yawar Hussain

Members of casual daily wagers staged a protest in Press Colony in Srinagar.On one wintry November 29, morning in 2020, Farooq Ahmad Dagga long wait ended with his death. He was lowered in his grave and the funeral shroud included his hope that one day he will be a regular employee of the Jammu and Kashmir government and his family will reap the benefits of his sweat and blood that he contributed to the department he worked for.

Farooq was part of 61000 workers engaged on a temporary basis in Jammu and Kashmir since the 1990s with the promise by each government of getting them regularized after a gap of seven years. He was one of the hundreds who worked Public Health Engineering (PHE) Department as a Daily Rated Worker since 1996.

Farooq’s brother, Latief, who also is engaged with PHE, says his brother died on duty while working in Soura.

“He got two dozen stitches on his back. We sold our ancestral land for his treatment because the government provided no aid,” Latief regretted. “But last year he passed away with the hope of getting regularized one day still in his heart.”

Latief, who himself has only four years of service left also, has his family split. His wife separated from him and it ended in a divorce, a crisis he attributes to his poor financial condition.

“I got married 14 years back,” Latief said. “My marriage ended seven years back as the relation between me and my wife deteriorated due to lack of finances.” For years, he said, the daily wagers had to do without a monthly salary on time.

His brother, Latif said, was 37 years old, and used to eagerly follow news bulletins in anticipation of any news related to their regularization.