The city police removed four persons including R. Govindarajan, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) district secretary and a leader in Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, for attempting to stage a fast-unto-death at the Collectorate during the grievances meeting on Monday.
They were protesting against the “inordinate delay” in implementing court orders initiating recovery proceedings against a private mill here for its failure to pay back wages and gratuity benefits.
According to Mr. Govindarajan, S. Manickam was working in the spinning mill till 1998 when he was removed from service without “due reason.” He had challenged the dismissal in the Labour Court and obtained favourable orders in 2006 for wages and reinstatement.
The case went to the High Court, which also ruled against the mill in 2011 and ordered the Collector and Tahsildhar to initiate revenue recovery proceedings to pay a sum of nearly Rs. 3 lakh to Mr. Manickam.
“However, till now the court orders have not been implemented despite our repeated representations to the Collector and Tahsildhar. The Labour Court has also ordered the same mill to pay a compensation of Rs. 75,000 plus interest to R. Lakshmi, whose husband R. Rajan was also working in the mill and died some time ago, and their son R. Velan. This order too has not been implemented.”
Excess fee
A group of parents submitted a petition to Collector M. Karunagaran urging him to take action against Amrita Vidhyalaya at Nallampalayam for collecting excess fee and improperly treating the parents when they questioned the management.
According to Raghu Nath, the school was collecting Rs. 20,500 for Standard I in CBSE stream this year besides mandating that all kids must buy educational material only from them even though the prices were high. Last year, the fee was Rs.15,500, he said.
When contacted, a high level school functionary said that they had both the Matriculation and CBSE boards of education on the same premises.
The fee determination committee had not fixed the fees for CBSE and the Amrita Vidhyalaya was still waiting for the committee to provide an appointment.
The parents got confused between the two boards, the functionary said, adding that this issue had already been clarified to the Chief Education Officer and the Inspector of Matriculation Schools.
“Some parents are unnecessarily creating problems. The allegation that the school, which is run by an ashram, ill-treated parents is totally unfounded,” the functionary said.
