Immediately accept the demands of the striking Chennai workers: letter to TN CM

Letter to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu regarding the demand for regularization of the ‘temporary’ sanitation workers of Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board:

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We the undersigned, are writing to you in support of the demand of the sanitation workers of Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board (CMWSSB) related to the regularization of their employment. The workers have been waging a struggle against the monthly contract system and have been demanding permanent status for past several years now. The governments in the past have not acted on their demands. The promise of ‘Governance of a New Dawn’ made by your government had instilled hope in them of getting their long-standing demands accepted, but their experience of the last few months has belied those expectations, and forced them to announce an indefinite strike starting from Monday, May 16, 2022.
Sanitation is a regular and continuing function of urban local bodies and hiring of workers for a permanent activity on contract basis, goes against the spirit and letter of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970. The contract system creates extreme vulnerability among workers in general, but usage of extreme form of monthly contract system is even more pernicious, given the nature of sanitation work.
Most of the workers involved in sanitation work for Chennai Metro Water Supply and Sewerage Board are Dalits, and the contract system not only exploits their labour, but hinders any possibility of social mobility, forcing multiple generations of workers to continue in sanitation work. Absence of security of employment, weakens the ability of workers to assert their right to safe work and effectively demand adequate safety and protective gears.
For these reasons, we urge you to immediately accept the demands of the striking workers and put and end to this inhumane system of work, and thereby redeem your pledge of ‘Governance of a New Dawn’.
Our hope is inspired in large part by the fact that Tamil Nadu has a relatively exceptional record of implementing welfare measures in the cause of human development, and by the fact that your own party has been informed by a long history of pressing for socioeconomic equity and a just social order. By responding fairly and sensitively to the legitimate demands of sanitation workers, Tamil Nadu also has the opportunity of re-asserting itself as a front-line state in the matter of public welfare policy. This could well have a demonstration effect, in terms of setting an example which many other States of the Indian Union may feel compelled to follow.
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Endorsed by:

• Shiva Shankar, Visiting Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
• S Subramanian, Independent Researcher, Chennai
• Siddharth K J, Independent Researcher
• Dr. Sylvia Karpagam, Public Health Doctor

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