Daman Rawal, president of CAAN Chapter of Nepal National Employees´ Organization, said they suspended their all forms of agitation after the MoF agreed to raise allowance during the meeting with agitating employees on the day. [break]
“We lifted padlocked in all offices under CAAN, which had remained closed since the last few days, on Tuesday after the MoF officials agreed to hike allowance and assured us to fulfill our other demands through CAAN board,” Rawal told myrepublica.com.
CAAN employees had warned of going up to the extent of halting operation of flights at all airports across the country, including Tribhuvan International Airport, from Wednesday if their demands were not met. They had put forth a charter of demands, demanding hike in allowance to 66 percent of the salary, representation of employees in CAAN board and security for the employees among others.
“Our major demand of allowance has been settled. We have suspended all protest programs as we have been assured that our other demand would be fulfilled by CAAN board,” Rawal said.
Tanka Mani Sharma, joint secretary of the MoF, who attended the lengthy negotiations, said MoF has agreed to increase residence allowance by up 20 to 30 percent of salary depending upon the placement of the employees and their ranks, in addition to local allowance which has been provided at par with government employees. “We decided that the other demands be addressed by CAAN board as no additional resources would be required to address those demands,” said Sharma.
Earlier, MoF had insisted that it would not increase the allowance by more than 51 percent of the salary.
A total of 925 employees are working in CAAN and its offices across the country.
The proposal to increase allowance was forwarded by CAAN to MoF through Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation a few days ago.
The employees had padlocked the entrance of CAAN head office at Babarmahal and the offices of chiefs of all 37 domestic airports outside the Valley since Friday, bringing administrative works at the offices to a halt.
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