HC comes to the aid of conservancy workers

Don’t disengage their services for three months, says court, highlighting their role in fight against second wave of COVID-19

The Madras High Court has ordered that the services of 1,457 conservancy workers, engaged on non-permanent basis under National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM), in Zone-7 (Ambattur) of Greater Chennai Corporation, should not be disturbed for three months. The order was passed taking into consideration the need for such frontline workers to fight the raging second wave of COVID-19. Justice S. Vaidyanathan issued the direction on a writ petition filed by Uzhaipor Urimai Iyakkam, an association representing the conservancy workers. The association had stated that its members had been performing yeomen service of cleaning the streets, lakes and so on by risking their lives during the pandemic. Yet, the GCC was planning to divest them of the job by outsourcing the work, they claimed. They sought a direction to the State government as well as the GCC to pay them the same monthly salary that is paid to permanent workers and not to disengage their services. Defending the GCC, its counsel Karthika Ashok told the court that two private firms Urbaser and Ramky Enviro Engineers had been entrusted with the conservancy work in the city under NULM and that those companies too had been engaging sanitary workers.