Members of the Tamil Nadu State Primary Cooperative Bank All Employees’ Association (TACBEA) staged demonstrations at the district headquarters of Ramanathapuram and Sivaganga, seeking protection to fair price shop employees who were “forced to commit suicide due to the pressure by inspection squads and outsiders”.
The employees, who were on casual leave en masse on Monday, joined the protest to highlight the need for providing a congenial working atmosphere in fair price shops and preventing ‘corrupt’ officials from exerting pressure on them to pay exorbitant amount for shortage of food items.
The salesmen were also forced to pay regular monthly ‘mamool’ to local outsiders, they alleged.
Association district secretary G. Muthuramalingam who led the agitation here said three fair price shop employees in Chennai, Tiruvarur and Madurai districts had committed suicide in the last couple of months due to pressure from officials and urged the government to pay a compensation of Rs. 10 lakh each to the three families.
Stating that at least two employees in Dindigul and Kancheepuram districts had attempted suicide, he said the government should evolve a system to ensure that the food items supplied to the fair price shops by the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Department weighed correctly.
There were shortages in all the essential items supplied by the department and the salesmen were taken to task during inspections. “The inspections are done not with the intention to correct the system but to extract money from the hapless salesmen,” he said.
The employees were presently governed by 15 departments, he said, and demanded that they be brought under the control of one department.
Ramanathapuram district president V. Muthuselvam, and Sivaganga district president Britto advised the employees not to take the extreme step of committing suicide when they faced pressure from the officials. Instead they should express their grievance to the association office-bearers at the taluk and district levels, they said.
