MUZAFFARABAD: The Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) government and its employees, protesting against the manhandling of the principal secretary to the prime minister by Senior Minister Chaudhry Mohammad Yasin, reached an agreement on Thursday, paving way for an end to their crippling strike.

The agreement became possible with the efforts and mediation of a three-member parliamentary committee comprising Minister for Finance Chaudhry Latif Akbar, Minister for School Education Mian Abdul Waheed and Minister for Forests Sardar Javed Ayub and a three-member coordination committee consisting of Senior Member Board of Revenue Sardar Naeem Shiraz, Secretary Services and General Administration Chaudhry Munir Hussain and DIG Muzaffarabad Range Tahir Mahmmod Qureshi.

The committees held several rounds of negotiations with the representatives of protesting employees, following which both sides reached an agreement which was also endorsed by Prime Minister Chaudhry Abdul Majeed.

According to the agreement, revealed to Dawn by Mr Shiraz, Senior Minister Yasin would tender a written apology to Principal Secretary Fayyaz Ali Abbasi; the prime minister would issue a direction to all ministers to avoid such a behaviour with government servants in future with a warning that those violating this direction would be sacked from the cabinet; police would proceed in accordance with the FIR against Mr Yasin and Mr Abbasi would not be removed from the position of principal secretary.

Mr Shiraz said members of both committees would inform the protesting employees of these decisions in the forenoon on Friday, following which the strike would be called off formally.

Earlier in the day, the government was compelled to prorogue the session of the Legislative Assembly within moments of its initiation, in view of the strike of the employees. Main opposition PML-N lawmaker Chaudhry Tariq Farooq, who had submitted an adjournment motion on the scuffle between the senior minister and principal secretary, criticised the prorogation, saying the Peoples Party government was afraid of facing the reality that “it had failed on all fronts”.

“This government has brought every institution of state on the verge of collapse and yesterday’s incident is a glaring example of it,” he told reporters.

Hardly 500 yards away from the Legislative Assembly building, hundreds of gazetted and non-gazetted employees assembled on the lawns of the Civil Secretariat to demand legal action against Mr Yasin for manhandling the principal secretary.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2015

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