‘Holiday’ protest by passport office employees

CHANDIGARH - Employees of Regional Passport Office (RPO) here Saturday staged a protest against the privatisation of their work by working on a holiday.

“This is the beginning of our protest and we do not want to affect the work of the office. Therefore, we had chosen to work even on a holiday rather than going for a strike. But from here we will certainly intensify our campaign,” All India Passport Employees Association Chandigarh unit’s president Sunil Dutt told IANS.

On their demands, Dutt said the authorities are planning to involve a private company, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to computerise the work of the passport office, adding that the TCS software “will create a scope for manipulation”.

“Then, any TCS employee can hack the software and cause a serious problem. Therefore we demand that whatever software they introduce, it should be the property of the government and only present employees should be trained to work on it.”

Beside this union territory, this region has passport offices in Jalandhar and Amritsar in Punjab and Shimla in Himachal Pradesh.

The RPO here caters to just 50 per cent of Punjab, 60 per cent of Haryana and Chandigarh. Nearly The remaining area of Haryana is catered to by the passport office in Delhi.

Dutt said that they will again go for agitation during lunch time March 2 and 3 and then go for a complete strike March 4 and 5.

Regional Passport Officer Vitul Kumar was not available for comment, despite repeated attempts.