By: Mohammad Tahir
SRINAGAR: Despite the advisory from the GOI the termination of employees from the job would further deepen the crisis; eight employees of Kupwara district are still waiting for justice as they have been left on the mercy of God.
Assistant Labour Commissioner Kupwara sent an email to the company address [email protected] on April 11, 2020 that said that this office has received a complaint filed by your employees claiming therein that they have been illegally terminated by you without given a notice, which is a grass violation under labour law as such you are hereby directed to go through the contents of the compliant and submit the reply within 07 days otherwise legal action as warranted under law shall follow, an email stated.
Again an email was sent by same office to the company on April 18 that reads, “this is in continuation to this office communication, sent to you via mail, wherein you were directed to go through the contents of the complaint and submit the reply within 07 days but nothing has been heard from your side till date. As such you are given last and final opportunity to submit the reply within 07 days otherwise legal action shall follow without further intimation”.
However on April 20, 2020 the reply from the company was received by the office of the Assistant Labour Commissioner Kupwara that reads, “we apologize for the delayed response as the first email from your esteemed self, got bounded off before reaching us. However we would like to draw your kind attention that we are a skill development PIA, taking care of an NSDC project funded by the Government of India”, the reply of email from the Orion Edutech Pvt Ltd stated.
It further elaborated that, “this is to inform you that for almost one year we have not received any new batch requirement from the concerned ministry team however, we have been paying salaries to the employees almost regularly, thus we are left with no other choice but to close our Tangdar centre and release the employees so that they can explore other opportunities elsewhere”.
“In this regard we un-wantedly had to decide to lay off all the 8 employees reporting to the above mentioned center, as per company policy and abiding to the labour laws, all these employees will be eligible for their March salary, April Salary (till 2nd April 2020), 15 days basic pay and relieving letter”.
They also stated that this will help the employees to pull through as well as get a new job. “We will start the payments as soon as we receive the full and final settlement forms and resignation letters from those employees”.
The screenshot shared by the employees where his LWD is showing as 21st March was a system glitch due to an up gradation at that moment, however, in reality their LWD was considered 2nd April 2020. “We have tried our best to explain the employees however, we failed,” they said.