Help avert postal strike, Yechury tells PM

As postal employees gear up to go on a nationwide strike, senior CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury today asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to intervene in the matter to resolve the standoff.
In a letter to Singh, the CPI(M) Polit Bureau member said the demands raised by the employees “appear very reasonable” and sought a settlement to avert the strike so that services are not disrupted.
The demands of the postal employees include setting up of a judicial commission for Gramin Dak Sewaks (GDS) as per the normal practice instead of forming a committee with a retired officer as Chairman of the GDS Committee.
“This is in clear violation of an agreement reached during the 1993 postal strike….Therefore, the demand for setting up the Judicial Commission is fully justified and cannot be compromised,” he said in the letter.
Other demands are recognition to the National Federation of Postal Employees and scrapping of a decision to hand over certain post offices in urban areas to private parties as franchisees.
“This is the beginning of the privatisation of postal services in the country. The Unions are totally opposed to the scheme. But despite the opposition, postal authorities are going ahead with their decision,” he observed.

“These demands appear very reasonable and I cannot conceive of any pressing reasons why they are not being accepted,” Yechury said and urged the Prime Minister to personally intervene in the matter.