FLASH NEWS
Friday, April 30, 2021
PRESS STATEMENT
THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT WAS ISSUED TO THE PRESS BY THE JOINT PLATFORM OF CENTRAL TRADE UNIONS AND SECTORAL FEDERATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS TODAY 28TH APRIL 2021.
Trade Unions write to the Prime Minister
Deplore callous attitude of government in handling covid 19 crises
Calls for observing May Day
Against the anti worker, anti farmer, anti people policies of the Government
The online meeting of Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Independent Sectoral Federations held on 28th April 2021 expressed grave concern at the cruel insensitivity of the Government at the centre in addressing and combating the second wave of the Covid Pandemic. The alarming country wide surge of this second wave of Covid has thrown the lives of the people, working people in particulars in total jeopardy. The daily infection count has already crossed 3 lakhs and is estimated to grow further in the coming days. Number of daily deaths too has surged. A substantial part of deaths are preventable, being caused due to non-availability of basic infrastructure, oxygen, hospital beds and essential medicines. The CTUs and Sectoral Federations/Associations have written to the Prime Minister(The letter attached)
In the midst of such grave humanitarian crisis, the Central government ridiculously draws satisfaction over overcoming the crisis under the leadership of Narendra Modi! The Union Finance Minister has made mindless self congratulatory statement that their programme of privatisation/disinvestment is on track and in progress!
Caught unprepared, despite the warning about a second country wide wave, the Central government is now trying to blame the people, the state governments and everybody except itself for the surge of casualty with much more intensity and speed. The reprimand of EC by some High Courts has Vindicated the stand of Trade Unions having taken time to time. Now only the order has come not to organise any rally, celebration from 2nd to 15th may in the election bound states.
There is serious shortage of vaccines, testing facilities, hospital beds, ventilators, oxygen, medicines and above all trained personnel – doctors, nurses and other medical staff. The front line workers and employees are overworked and lack adequate protection. Instead of addressing these serious issues, BJP leaders including union ministers are engaged in shifting the responsibility to the state governments and indulging in blame games.
In the midst of this, the vaccine policy announced by the government puts corporate profits above the precious lives of people. Today, it is crucial to strictly regulate, under direct government supervision, the entire vaccination process to ensure that the entire population is vaccinated within a definite time frame. Vaccine production must be urgently scaled up; it must be imported as necessary. But the government is shamelessly succumbing to the profit hungry international drug mafia and liberalised vaccine sales. The new vaccine policy liberalises the vaccine sale by deregulating the prices through a discriminatory process that too without taking any concrete measures for augmenting availability.
States are not given the promised doses of vaccines. This has severely affected the first phase of vaccination itself. The new vaccine policy of Modi government stipulates that the state governments have to procure the vaccines from the open market with higher price of Rs 400/Rs 600 per dose as announced by the two vaccine companies in India. They will be thrown into unhealthy competition with each other and also with the private sector hospitals which are also free to procure the vaccines at Rs 600/ Rs 1200. More such notorious announcements are expected to pour in the days to come with the Govt-corporate nexus. It is atrocious that the Serum Institute which has announced Rs 400 per dose of vaccine for the state governments and Rs 600 for private hospitals in India.
Covisheild is priced at 1.78 Euro (Rs 160) in Europe and at $4 (Rs 300) in the US and Bangladesh, at Rs.237 in Brazil, at Rs. 226 in UK
This pro-corporate deregulation on vaccine and other essential ingredients of pandemic management will further facilitate hoarding and black marketing which is already going on in case of essential medicines like Remdesivir and oxygen. Overwhelming majority of our people who cannot afford the huge price of the vaccine would be excluded. Policies of exclusion have now become the hallmark of the Central government.
The local and regional lockdowns and curfews being imposed in several states are creating uncertainties about the work and income among the working people, the migrant workers and workers in the unorganised sector in particular. Reminiscent of the migrant workers’ march around one year back, migrant workers are again heading to their native places. None of the orders under Disaster Management Act issued so far by various authorities on curfew or scaling down of operation by industry etc had cared to concretely direct the employers to protect employment/livelihood of workers, their incomes and residences. It is again an attempt by the governments, as last year, to sacrifice the lives and livelihood of the workers and the toiling people to safeguard the interests of the employers’ class.
The Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Federations demands the government to withdraw the new pro-corporate as well as discriminatory vaccine policy and take immediate measures to ensure 100% procurement of the vaccine, adequate supply of vaccines to the states, free of cost, utilising the PM care fund. The government, sufficiently empowered by Disaster Management Act must not abdicate its responsibility of prioritising protection of the lives of the people during this grave pandemic, over profiteering by vaccine-pharmaceutical barons.
The joint platform of Central trade unions and Federations point out that it is the public sector companies that are, as ever, coming to the rescue of the nation in this critical situation. It is the public sector steel companies that are producing and supplying oxygen; it is the Indian Railways that is transporting Oxygen to the needy states. We also remind the government that it was the public sector financial institutions in our country that have protected the country against the 2008 world crisis. The joint platform of trade unions demand that the government must immediately stop its mindless privatisation drive. We demand that immediate measures be taken to strengthen the existing public sector medicine and oxygen production units which are already playing a frontline role in producing/supplying oxygen and other necessities and establish new ones to ensure universal and comprehensive public health care.
The Joint Platform also demands that the Govt must ensure that any order issued by any authorities under Disaster Management Act imposing restrictions in movement, curfew etc must accompany strict enforceable orders to all employers and all concerned banning retrenchment, wage-cut and eviction from residences etc. It cannot be just an advisory but a stringently enforceable direction and the Disaster Management Act adequately empowers the Govt to issue such orders and enforce.
The Joint Platform calls upon the workers and toiling people to observe the forthcoming May Day, the international working class solidarity day through jointly organizing agitation in as many locations throughout the country to press for the following demands, while expressing solidarity with the working class movement going on throughout the world:
1. Ramp up vaccine production and ensure universal free vaccination within a definite time frame. Ensure free supply of oxygen in the crises as in present situation.
2. Ensure adequate hospital beds, oxygen and other medical facilities to meet the Covid surge
3. Scrap anti-people discriminatory pro-corporate Vaccine Policy
4. Strengthen public health infrastructure including recruiting the necessary health personnel
5. Any order under Disaster Management Act issued by any authority imposing restrictions in movement, curfew etc must accompany strict order on all employers and all concerned banning retrenchment, wage-cut and eviction from residences etc and same must be strictly enforced.
6. Scrap anti-worker Labour Codes and anti-people Farm Laws and Electricity Bill
7. Stop privatization and Disinvestment
8. Cash transfer of Rs 7500 per month for all non income tax paying families
9. 10 kg free food grains per person per month for the next six months
10. Ensure non Covid patients get effective treatment in government hospitals
11. Ensure availability of protective gear, equipments etc for all health and frontline workers and those engaged in pandemic-management work including ASHAs and anganwadi employees along with comprehensive insurance coverage for them all
Covid protocols – wearing masks, maintaining physical distance etc should be strictly followed by all our leaders, cadres, activists and members to safeguard their own health and the health of their comrades, colleagues and family members.
TRANSMISSION AND DELIVERY OF POSTAL MAIL (SPEED POST, LETTER, PARCEL & ITPS) TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES IS SUBJECTED TO DELAY DUE TO SUSPENSION OF INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS TO MANY COUNTRIES DUE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC
(CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO VIEW)
https://www.indiapost.gov.in/VAS/Pages/News/IP_DELAY_DEL_26042021.pdf
Dated: 20.4.2021.
May day reminds us of the great struggles and sacrifice of American workers at haymarket in Chicago in 1886. It was the manifestation of the impact created by the Communist manifesto written by Karl Marx and Engels and released in 1848. The demand for restricting the working hours to eight hours per day had moved the industrial workers especially in Germany, France and England in Europe and the United States of America. Equally determined was the bourgeoisie to suppress the revolutionary movement by all means and hiring goons they hurled bombs against the workers who had assembled to realise the demand for eight hour working day. The impact of the movement and the indignation of the haymarket incident was so great that the world Nations had to adopt legislative measure to enforce the dictum of 8 hour work. In most of the countries May day is declared a paid holiday.
The neo-liberal economic policies whose theme is greater exploitation of workers to maximise profit had been moving with that single point objective for the last a decade, the end result of which in our country was to increase the working hours to 12 per day and amend the labour code to make this possible. The entry of this nefarious idea into the Indian statute book must be characterised as the single great achievement of the present day Mody Government. The Government of India by making it possible to have such a legislation passed by the Indian Parliament by means of surreptitious methods, has thrown the challenge to the very existence of the working class movement in the country. The May day 2021 must be viewed in this context and the determination to defeat it and meet the challenge squarely must be demonstrated in no uncertain terms, despite the pandemic.
It must not only be seen as a challenge and indication of a renewed attempt to increase the level of suppression. It is undoubtedly an attack on modern principles of democratic polity, decent living standards, and the very culture and civilization of this great country. The labour code is the most effective tool handed over to the corporate entrepreneurs in the country to intensify the exploitation of the Indian working class.
The significance of the May day this year is to remind and be reminded of the great need to build up the most powerful and united struggle of the workers to. bring back the country to the assembly of civilised Nations of the world and throw out the perpetrators of this grave and inhuman injustice, whose mind-set dates back to the medieval days .
The pandemic situation in the country has entered the worst phase after a short respite. India which had the biggest and the most efficient manufacturing facility for the production of vaccines is now reeling under its shortage. The Indian facility which was hitherto operated as a public sector enterprise was dismantled during the neo liberal days. It could have produced the life saving vaccines at the cheapest cost and faster than any unit in the world. Never in the history of our country, especially after independence, vaccination against the epidemic diseases had been charged by the Government. The lack of production facilities, caused by the dismantling of public sector units the need for faster vaccination to arrest the spread of the pandemic, the increased cost of production when done in the private sector, all have conjured up a situation whereby the affected poor are left with no alternative but to die. To cater to the requirements of the increased number of patients, our Public health care system, which had also been attacked over the years, do not have beds, medicines, ICUs, Ventilators and workforce. This human made tragedy is what has been contributed by the so called liberal economic policies, where people do not matter. The Government is clueless for what is dismantled or destroyed cannot be resurrected or reconstructed with the same speed with which it was destroyed. The mutation of the genetic structure of the virus had added fuel to the fire.
The present pathetic situation in the country is the product the policies pursued by the ruling class, intensified by the crony capitalism of the present day Government . The CITU in their may day manifesto 2021 has rightly called upon the Indian working class to realise the situation and react and react vehemently to throw out the present ruling dispensation of the country. It has exhorted the workers in their May day communication, (the full text of which is placed on our website):
In view of comprehensive all round onslaught on the people, the economy, democratic system, societal harmony and the national integrity as a whole, the fight back by a class oriented working class has to base itself on comprehensive understanding of the character of these attacks of the ruling class, in all its expressions, linking one with the other. It has to be the united battle of the working class along with the people to defend the rights and dignity of the workers and the people, their livelihood, defend the democratic system and values, defend the national economy and resources and above all to defend the unity of the people. This requires consistent and continuous efforts to expose the inherent exploitative character of the capitalist system, its inhuman machinations and the politics that promote it. This May Day let us pledge to take up this task in right earnest.
Confederation of Central Government employees and workers are in full consonance with the views expressed in CITU manifesto 2021 and calls upon its affiliates, State COCs and other fraternal organisations to unite and be an integral part of the struggles for a pro-people alternative system of governance.
With greetings,
Yours fraternally,
R.N. Parasar
Secretary General
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