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A national convention organised by the Central Trade Unions and supported by the farmers’ body, Samyukt Kisan Morcha, held here on Thursday, decided to step up agitations on a ten-point agenda. The demands include scrapping the Labour Codes, three farm reform laws and the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, National Monetisation Pipeline and providing income support and universal social security for all informal sector workers.
The CTUs also discussed the preparations for the general strike to be held during the budget session of 2022.
‘Strengthen social security’
The convention also demanded increased allocation for MNREGA and extension of a similar programme to urban areas, statutory minimum wage and social security for Anganwadi, ASHA, mid-day-meal and other scheme workers, protection and insurance for frontline Covid workers, increase in public investment in agriculture, education, health by taxing the rich through wealth tax etc in order to revive and revamp the national economy and reduction in Central Excise duty on petroleum products are other demands raised at the convention.
The convention felt the economic situation was deteriorating from bad to worse. “Increasing unemployment has been competing with pace of job-losses arising out of destruction and extreme degeneration of existing employment and livelihood-avenues, throwing not only the working people in rural and urban areas but also the entire youth-student generations in a situation of future-less destitution and desperation,” a declaration adopted by the convention said.
‘Supporting corporates’
Simultaneously, the Government has been continuously lowering the corporate tax rates, abolished wealth tax, declaring moratorium on payment of charges/taxes payable by corporates and also moratorium on debt repayments. Corporate/big-business community have actually gained a fortune during this crisis-ridden pandemic period by way of increasing their wealth by more than 40 per cent—all at the cost of misfortunes and miseries being suffered by majority of working people, the declaration added.
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