Employees and pensioners staged a protest outside the Deputy Commissioner’s office at the local Mini Secretariat in Faridkot on Tuesday and burnt an effigy of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, raising slogans against the state government.The protest was held on the call of the Joint Coordination Committee, comprising the Punjab Employees and Pensioners Joint Front and the Joint Employees Forum.Speaking on the occasion, employee and pensioner leaders alleged that the Bhagwant Mann government had gone further than previous governments in taking decisions against employees and pensioners.They expressed regret that the government had not implemented a court decision on Dearness Allowance and was refusing to restore the Old Pension Scheme, implement the 2.59 multiplier, regularise contractual employees, or accept the demands of scheme workers, alleging various departments were framing and implementing anti-employee rules.The leaders announced that a state-level rally would be held at the Chief Minister’s native village Satoj on August 23 to press for restoration of the Old Pension Scheme, to be followed by a collective mass casual leave by all Punjab employees on August 27, aimed at halting government work and making the proposed Punjab Bandh a success.Among those present were Prem Chawla, Jatinder Kumar, DTF district president Sukhwinder Singh Sukhi, Amrik Singh Sandhu, Ravinder Pal Singh Ghali, Bakshish Singh, Kanwaljit Kaur, Inderjit Singh Khiva, Kulwant Singh Chani, Balvir Singh Sibian and Balkar Singh Sahota, besides Kiran Prakash Mehta, Gagan Pahwa, Dharminder Singh, Narinder Kumar, Harpreet Singh Sran, Principal Krishan Lal, Inderjit Singh Gill and Kulwinder Singh Maur, among a large number of other employees and pensioners.