KATHMANDU: Two unions at Gokarna Forest Resort— one affiliated to the UCPN-Maoist and other owing allegiance to CPN-UML — have withdrawn their protest programmes after reaching a four-point agreement to settle problems through dialogue between the management and the in-house unions. They reached the agreement after a talk held among representatives of resort management, central level representatives of trade unions and those of Hotel Association Nepal (HAN) here today.

The resort management and in-house trade unions will have another dialogue on Sunday for a final agreement. The agreement has elaborated that the central leaders of trade unions cannot direct their in-house trade unions when talks are going on. As per the agreement,

if the dialogue does not yield fruit make within 10 days further talks will be held in the presence of HAN representatives and central level leaders of the trade unions.

Further, the resort management and trade unions have agreed to talk on other issues except salary, allowance and grade during the next round of talks.

Trade unions had put a 31-point charter of demands to the management. “We started the protest when the management ignored our demands even after a series of talks,” said Sridhar Pokhrel, secretary of All Nepal Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union (ANHRWU).

The situation further worsened when trade unions refuse to obey their own agreement, said Suman Sachdev, director of the resort. He accused trade unions of blindly following their mother organizations demands saying that 40 per cent salary increment is the demand of a national level trade union. “The problems will be solved if the trade unions respect prior agreements,” he said, “The resort management is ready to do the same.”

ANHRWU has demanded 40 per cent increase in salary, 100 per cent increase in dearness allowance, permanent jobs for workers who have worked 240 days and promotion of those having served for seven years.