Nearly 300 sanitation workers hired on a contract basis at Primary Health Centers (PHC) in Tamil Nadu under the Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) scheme staged a protest on Friday, March 17, over various demands to improve their working conditions, including regularisation of their services. Amid heavy rain, the protest was held near Rajarathinam Stadium in Chennai’s Egmore by members of the Tamil Nadu PHC RCH Contract Sanitary Workers’ Welfare Association. They demanded a hike in salary and a reduction in working hours from 12 hours to eight hours.
There are a total of 3,140 sanitation workers who work at PHCs under the RHC scheme in Tamil Nadu. Each PHC has two sanitation workers who work for 12 hours per day, without weekly offs or offs on government holidays and other benefits, members of the association said. Since 2005, these workers have been working in labour wards, assisting doctors and nurses and cleaning the delivery wards in PHCs, on a contract basis. Even workers who have completed seven years of service have only been drawing a salary of Rs 1,500 per month, according to the workers.
“Even the Rs 1,500 salary is only for those who have completed 7 years. Some of the protesters are getting Rs 1,000 or an even smaller amount”, said Arasu, a worker from Tiruvannamalai district. A single woman with two college-going sons, Arasu said she has to manage her household expenses with loans from self-help groups, or money borrowed by pawning her jewellery.
A government order (GO 385) issued by the state’s finance department in 2010 had announced a special time scale pay for RCH workers who had been working on a daily wage basis on consolidated pay for more than three years. In 2017, another government order (GO 792) was issued by the health and family welfare department, fixing the wages of 3,140 RCH sanitation workers as daily wages fixed by the concerned district Collectors, applicable to the category, from time to time. Amid heavy rain, the sanitation workers urged Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin to implement the two government orders.
“There has been no initiative to implement the government orders from the government side”, said Dr Shanthi, general secretary of the RCH sanitary workers association. She added, “These women sanitation workers have travelled from across the state to bring to the attention of the government the issues they are facing and the difficulty of surviving on such a minimal salary.”
“Before every election, Chief Minister candidates promise to implement the government orders and improve our working conditions. We expect MK Stalin to take the necessary steps this time,” one of the protesters told TNM. The workers demanded regularisation of their services and salary as fixed by district Collectors in 2017. The association demanded that salary arrears from 2017 be given to the workers. It also demanded a weekly off, off on government holidays, and medical and maternity leave for them.