Central trade unions, which met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, here on Saturday as part of the pre-budget talks, flagged the great hardship being faced by common people, especially daily wage earners, due to demonetisation of ₹500/1,000 notes and urged for urgent steps to ameliorate their difficulties.

Expressing “sorrow that none of the suggestions made by us collectively in the last pre-budget meetings have got any positive reflection in the previous budgets,” the unions pointed out that instead there was a drastic cut of ₹4.40 lakh crore in the allocation of funds for social sector schemes.

“This drastic cut needs to be restored and covered up,” said a memo submitted to the Ministry by 10 trade unions such as INTUC, AITUC, CITU, SEWA, HMS, TUCC and LPF.

Reiterating their 12-point demand charter called upon the Centre to raise internal resources rather than depend on foreign investment.

The memo called for “taxing the rich who have financial capacity to pay”, adding that the budget allocation for social sector and basic services such as health and education must be sufficiently increased, rather than reduced.

“The government must take firm measures to contain deliberate tax default by big businesses and corporate lobby leading to huge accumulation of unpaid direct tax due, which is increasing every successive year,’ said the memo.

Other issues

The other issues flagged by the unions include linking of minimum wages to the consumer price index, steps to arrest price rise of essentials, strengthen public sector units, no FDI in crucial sectors such as defence production, railways, financial sector, retail trade and other strategic sectors and social security for unorganised workers.

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