ICDS Helpers To Supervisors Stage Protest Over Disengagement, Tarigami Aghast

Srinagar: Anganwari helpers Saturday staged a protest making an emotional appeal to the government asking it to stop disengaging them.

Scores of Anganwari Helper to supervisor amid rains assembled at Press Enclave on Saturday saying that government without giving any second thought disengaged over 900 helpers to supervisors in Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme of Social Welfare Department.

Some of the employees were seen crying. “We have lost the job and a source of living. Where will we go now and what we will do,” one of the protesters told news agency Kashmir News Trust.

The protesters said that government engaged them when there was a need and now when they have been disengaged. “Instead of generating employment, this government is creating unemployment,” they said.

Meanwhile, CPI(M) leader Muhammad Yousuf Tarigami while terming the disengagement order very unfortunate said that instead of providing employment, government is even snatching the livelihood of those who have been serving the government for years together.

He urged the Lieutenant Governor and Chief Secretary to revoke the order immediately.

Tarigami said that he is aghast over the decision of Jammu and Kashmir administration to disengage 918 helpers to supervisors in Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme of Social Welfare Department.

“These helpers were earning their bread and butter by working hard in the department and making the government schemes successful. They have been at the forefront of the government’s fight against Covid-19 pandemic for the last one and half years and there is no genuine reason to disengage them,” he said adding that at a time when unemployment levels are rising in Jammu and Kashmir as educated youth struggle with neglect and lack of job-creation policy, such a decision to render those jobless, who were already in employment, can prove disastrous. (KNT)