Sanitary workers affiliated to Madurai Corporation Workers' Association staged a demonstration on the Corporation premises pressing many demands.
Addressing the protestors, Communist Party of India (Marxist) MLA R. Annadurai said that a contractor was paying Rs. 175 a day to drivers employed by him on corporation duty even as the Corporation was paying Rs. 220 a day for them. Similarly, the sanitary workers also were paid only Rs. 100 as against Rs. 140 a day. He demanded that the State government should cancel the contract and pay due salaries to the employees. It should relax the recruitment norms for Corporation and fill vacancies. Association leader R. Rajagopal said that 500 sanitary workers, deployed for mass cleaning work in connection with Chithirai festial in 2011, were yet to be paid their salaries. The workers would go on strike if the anti-worker attitude of the officials did not change.
Regularising the services of workers drawing consolidated pay for three years, all the sanitary workers from newly-added local bodies should be provided with Corporation pay scale, identity cards, uniforms, shoes and raincoats. Deductions made in salary for payments to be made in Life Insurance Corporation, thrift society, and bank should be paid to those organisations.
