Contract workers stage protest in Coimbatore, demand job regularisation

AITUC contract workers in Coimbatore demand regularisation, express disappointment over government response, seek support from Chief Minister and Minister.

Over 100 contract workers affiliated to the AITUC held a demonstration near the Coimbatore Collectorate on Tuesday, demanding regularisation of long-serving contract conservancy workers and drivers under the Coimbatore Corporation.

As part of their protest, the workers sent a petition by post, along with a copy of the DMK’s 2021 election manifesto, addressed to Chief Minister M.K. Stalin and Minister for Municipal Administration and Water Supply K.N. Nehru. In the petition, they reminded the government of its promise to regularise contract workers.

The workers expressed disappointment over a recent response made in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly. When a question about the regularisation of sanitation workers was raised, Minister Nehru reportedly replied that the posts had been outsourced and that workers were being encouraged to become entrepreneurs under a specific scheme, under which 213 workers had benefited so far.

The workers said the response had come as a blow. “Our future now seems uncertain, and we feel as though the government has turned away from us,” they said in the petition. They added that many among them had worked for over a decade without job security or benefits, in conditions akin to bonded labour.

They also noted that, contrary to the promise in the election manifesto, the government had issued a G.O. removing the provision to make them permanent and continued the outsourcing practice.