Passport employees strike work, public resort to agitation

Hundreds of visitors to the passport office were left in the lurch on Tuesday as the employees went on a strike. The strike was, however, called off around 3 pm after an assurance from the chief passport officer over phone and fax from Delhi. The All India Passport Employees Association (AIPEA) and the staff and employees of the local passport office at Thane struck work around 9 am on March 22 to press their demands.
Giving this information, office bearers of AIEPA of Thane said that the employees are agitating for their demands, including increase in staff strength, no privatization of passport system and for deployment of employees in embassies or missions abroad or merger of passport organization with ministry of external affairs and finally removal of anomaly in pay scale of superintendents.
The employees said there are pending promotions and other issues adding that, "80 per cent of us haven't got promotions for 14 years. There are technical issues and security issues too," the employees said. "The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has promised to meet our demands, but nothing has happened till now."
The Association said they were forced to take this step as their earlier strikes on March 1 and 3 and working on Saturdays on March 5 and 12 had failed to draw the attention of the concerned authorities. The demands include allowing passport kendras to function with passport offices for healthy competition, not allowing functional control of passport issue to be handed over to private hands in the interest of national security, filling up 539 promotional posts, sincerity in dealing with service matters and review of provision of direct entry to level of assistants.
Ayesha Kazi, a passport employee said, "We received the message calling for a two-day strike only on Monday night. Around 2: 45 pm today, we got the message to call off the strike. Hence, we resumed duty."
However, people were not convinced and they went on arguing with striking employees till noon. They said the sudden strike was unjust. They had no clue of the strike as they were waiting for hours at the gate. If it was a nationwide strike, why it was not reported in the media, they asked.
Due to no preemptive information, the applicants who had visited the office for the further processing of their files faced inconvenience. ''We are standing here since morning but the authorities don't seem to be bothered. I am not from the city and I would have to visit here again,'' said Tom Varghese an agent.
Sarita Vaz, a worried passport applicant who is working for a school said, "I have submitted my passport application some four months ago, but haven't got any response yet. I might end up losing my job because of this processing delay."