The government recently announced closure/merger of its presses. This has created job insecurity among employees, the Indian Express reported.

The Cabinet has announced merger of 17 government presses with five other presses which would be redeveloped at the time of merger.

This shift in strategy would aid the presses to undertake important, confidential or urgent decisions and multi-coloured printing work of central govt. offices all over the country.

Government of India Text Book Press Workers’ Association (GITPWA), protested this decision along with the National Federation of Printing, Stationery and Publication Employees. The meeting was held on September 21.

The meeting focused on the parliamentary standing committee’s decision to close 12 GOI presses including the one in Chandigarh.

Grave concern was expressed over the ignorance of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs over the 16th Lok Sabha Parliamentary Standing Committee’s recommendation for modernisation of all GOI presses.

"It is sad to know that the Chandigarh press is not included in the list of redevelopment despite being named the best press four times. The decision is not fair and the fear of unemployment and homelessness at the age of 50 is disturbing the employees," Gurbachan Singh, president of GITPWA, Chandigarh, was quoted as saying.

Chandigarh MP Kirron Kher also wrote to the Centre regarding this but her request didn’t receive any response.

The standing committee’s suggestions to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs were to equip GITPWA with variety of printing presses, skilled manpower, security and required infrastructure to manage and store important government data digitally and manually. These demands were ignored by the Centre.

GITPWA is agitated against the anti-worker move of the government and presented a report to the parliamentary standing committee to scrap the closure.