The employees have put forth 21 demands that include distribution of daily allowance of Rs 150 to each employee, introduction of housing plan for the workforce, and sending each staff member on a 15-day forced leave every year.[break]
Other demands include annual distribution of additional five months´ salary and allowances as festival and vacation expenses, modification in voluntary retirement scheme, and change in organizational structure in view growing workload of the board.
“We have been asking the management to introduce these changes for the last two years and include them in the Employees Regulation, which is being amended. But the management has forwarded the regulation to the Finance Ministry without holding discussions with staff members,” said Purna Bahadur Thapa, president of Employees Association of Insurance Board.
He said the employees will exercise utmost flexibility while negotiating with the management and have not been pressing the IB to fulfill all the demands. The employees had first placed these demands two years ago. At that time, the management had agreed to address them gradually.
But after the board failed to make any changes for a year, the employees held a protest last November, which was called off later following promises from the management to fulfill them soon. “The protest that is being held now is the continuation of what was organized last year,” Thapa said.
The protest program designed by the employees´ association for this year includes three-day-long ´pen down´ program, which basically means employees will stop work until Tuesday. If their demands are not fulfilled by that time, the employees will organize a sit-in in front of the office of IB chairman for another four days.
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