Chandigarh, May 1 (IANS) With the promise of a minimum daily wage of Rs 750, hundreds of Congress workers and labourers from Punjab on Friday staged a demonstration in support of their long-pending demands in front of the Vidhan Sabha here to mark International Labour Day.

Led by state Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring, the demonstration coincided with the special session convened by the Aam Aadmi Party government to mark Labour Day.

Speaking on the occasion, Warring said the special session was a mere drama on the part of the state government, as it had done nothing during the past four years when it had a chance to bring in laws for the welfare of labourers. He said holding a special session at the fag end of its term has only exposed the Aam Aadmi Party, adding that it only wanted a drama in the name of labourers.

He said the actual labourers were struggling and protesting in the ‘dharna’ today, while the Aam Aadmi Party government was taking token vows for labourers’ welfare. Warring demanded that the minimum daily wage be raised to Rs 750.

Besides, he said, for the labourers, the monthly wages should be between Rs 15,000 and Rs 17,000 per month; for the semi-skilled, between Rs 19,000 and Rs 20,000; and for the skilled labourers, between Rs 20,000 and Rs 22,000.

He said that nobody had any doubts that the Aam Aadmi Party had held the Assembly session to divert public attention in the name of labourers. He added that its time is already up, as hardly a few months have been left of its tenure.

He promised that once the Congress formed the government after the elections in the state, it would ensure a minimum of Rs 750 daily wage for labourers and would consider all other demands sympathetically.

Warring said that Congress has always worked for the welfare of labourers and the working class, citing the example of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which was a first-of-its-kind law in the world that guaranteed 100 days of work for unskilled labourers across the country.

–IANS

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