In Andhra’s Anantapur Municipal Corporation alone, at least six municipal workers have died from COVID-19 so far, according to Nagabhushanam, a municipal worker with the corporation. Municipal workers across the state say that they have continued to work with inadequate safety equipment throughout the pandemic, and yet, families of workers who died from COVID-19 are yet to receive any support from the government. Amid the pandemic, the workers are also overburdened with work as many posts remain vacant, they say. “One worker is being forced to do the work of four people. We are sent to work in government offices, and sometimes perform the duties of supervisors too with no extra,” said Sivalakshmi, a worker from Tenali.
To add to these woes, the Andhra Pradesh Corporation for Outsourced Services (APCOS), which was set up more than a year ago with the aim of ensuring job security for outsourced workers, has complicated things, as workers allege glitches in salaries and benefits, and a lack of accessible grievance redressal methods with the now centralised structure.
APCOS was established by the YSRCP government in November 2019 with the aim of removing private outsourcing agencies and middlemen while recruiting outsourced employees to work for the state government. As many of these private agencies failed to pay workers regularly, and failed to provide benefits like PF (provident fund) and ESI (Employee State Insurance), APCOS was meant to ensure better job security for outsourced staff. It was also suggested that the government could pass on some of the money saved from the commission paid to the outsourcing agencies to the workers themselves. But the centralised system has created new problems, according to workers.
While APCOS was started to provide better security, it hasn’t been working properly in nearly 95% of the municipalities, said Uma Maheshwara Rao, General Secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Municipal Workers and Employees Federation (affiliated to CITU). “Before APCOS, if a worker died at work or had to retire due to old age, we were able to talk to the local contractors and the commissioner, and ensure that another family member was employed within a month. This has now been delayed indefinitely with APCOS, and families are being forced to go without that income for many months,” Nagabhushanam said. According to Uma Maheshwara Rao, at least 80 municipal workers have died either due to COVID-19 or from accidents at work during the pandemic. While none of their families have received support from the Union government or state government so far, their kin are also unable to get these jobs easily, he said.
Outsourced workers are also being forced to retire once they are 60 years old, with no assurance of employment to a family member, Uma Maheshwara Rao added. According to Sivalakshmi, in some cases, the deceased or retired workers’ children have started work but haven’t received their pay. “When they complain about not getting paid, they are told that the salary has been disbursed but there might be a glitch in the system. If they complain about having to work without pay, they are told they are free to quit,” she said. For many outsourced workers, PF and ESI are being deducted from their salaries but not deposited in their accounts for around ten months now, according to Uma Maheshwara Rao.
The monthly health allowance of Rs 6,000 has also been delayed for two to six months in many municipalities for sanitation workers, school sweepers and others, he added. In case of any accidents at work too, outsourced workers are left without support, Sivalakshmi said. “A worker was recently hit by an auto while at work. She had to spend Rs 15,000 on medical expenses, and missed one month’s work without pay. Earlier, there was some scope to negotiate with the contractors for paid leave or to cover health expenses. But now, supervisors say it’s not their concern,” she said. “For any grievances, we are told to go approach the collectorate, which is difficult when we are already overworked,” Sivalakshmi said.
According to Uma Maheshwara Rao, around 3,500 posts of sanitation workers are vacant, apart from around 1,000 posts of municipal workers in engineering departments. “Instead of recruiting more workers and reducing the burden, they are allocating existing workers to additional duties at secretariats and other offices,” he said.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, workers in Anantapur were given masks and sanitisers only on a couple of occasions, after repeated demands by unions, Nagabhushanam said. “Out of 600 workers in the city, around 150 workers were given a pair of gloves once during the second wave,” he said. Most drivers and other workers dealing with garbage, including that from COVID-19 patients, have not received masks or gloves from the government, according to workers. Besides being overworked amid the difficult working conditions of the pandemic, issues with APCOS have made things more difficult for outsourced workers, Uma Maheshwar Rao said.
Municipal workers in Guntur on strike
The Andhra Pradesh Municipal Workers and Employees Federation went on strike for two days on June 14 and 15, in around 98 municipalities across the state, demanding that the state government provide basic protective equipment for workers, hire more staff to reduce burden on workers, address workers’ grievances with APCOS, and release pending allowances. The strike was called after the state government failed to respond to a strike notice earlier this month. The federation has now said that they might consider going on an indefinite strike if their demands remain unheard.
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