Dulal Sardar is the president of Dhaka College non-government workers’ union and his grievance is that after 15 years of employment, his salary is only Tk 7,000.
He has been active in the movement which demanded their jobs to be brought under government employment.
Those who work in the non-government category live with uncertainty and get very little benefit.
After the AL government came to power, third and fourth class employees of 196 colleges were co-opted. At present, 12,500 persons are working as non-government workers and their future is uncertain.
The non-government workers say, “As a student leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was expelled from the university in 1949 for calling a strike in demand of rights for the third and fourth class employees and today, in his Bangladesh we are languishing.”
Professor Mohammad Shamsul Huda of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Department, told Bangla Tribune, “Once government colleges could give appointment themselves but that chance no longer exists.”
Reportedly, there have been several writ petitions in this regard and in 2013, the High Court ordered inclusion of all posts leaving out only 29.
Principal of Dhaka College, Moazzem Hossain Mollah, says, “These workers are struggling to survive; we have increased their salary three times in the last three years and raised the issue of making their jobs permanent several times.”
As per ILO convention, any person working for six years in a non-government post should be made a government employee, he added.