Mumbai Beat

The MAT ruled that it was a policy decision of the state government and hence there was no need to give a three-month notice. The tribunal observed that the employees were aware on the date of joining office that they would retire after attaining 58 years of age and hence the three-month notice would not be in the interest of the public.

The MAT ruling will affect 18,000 state government employees.

CM assures on mill land sale

Chief Minister Narayan Rane today assured mill workers that he would take them into confidence before taking a decision regarding sale of excess mill land in the city.

Rane gave his assurance when a mill workers’ delegation met him at his office this afternoon. The delegation requested the chief minister not to allow the mill owners to sell the excess land as some of them had sold them without giving any compensation to the workers. They complained that thousands of workers had not been paid their wages for the last six months. They also demanded that the mill owners be directed to modernise the mills with the condition that no workers will be retrenched.

The CM informed the delegation that the mill owners had been asked to submit proposals for modernisation of the mills and the best of the proposals will be implemented at the earliest. At the same time, he has asked the workers to submit proposals to restart the closed mills.

The meeting was attended by Higher and Technical Education Minister Datta Rane, chairperson of the Girni Kamgar Sangathana and MLA Suryakant Desai, president of Firni Kamgar Sangh Datta Samant, Rashtriya Mill Mazdoor Sangh (RMMS) president Sachin Ahir, labour secretary M R Patil, Labour Commissioner M J Kulkarni and urban development secretary K Nalinakshan. However, INTUC president Ramrao Adik was conspicuous by his absence.

Flying squad to check new PDS

The state government has set up a flying squad to look into complaints of malpractices arising due to the new ration card policy announced by the state government recently.

Informing this Food and Civil Supplies secretary J M Phatak informed today that the squad will ensure that there are no rackets in the registration process. He also appealed to ration card holders to specify clearly whether they were withdrawing grains from the rations shops as this would ensure that the grains reach people who really need them.

The new ration cards will be distributed by the end of May. Phatak informed that of the 38 lakh ration card holders, half had already submitted their forms. However, he appealed to the public not to panic if they had not filled in their forms. “Though the last date for submitting the forms has been fixed at March 15, card holders can submit their forms after that also as it is a continuous process,” he added.